


No Power in the 'verse(s)

by nature_aly



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Genderswap, Liam/Sophia, Louis/Briana, M/M, Science Fiction, minor mentions of canon relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-28 04:49:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6315574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nature_aly/pseuds/nature_aly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the American leg of the OTRA tour, Liam and Louis go on a recce where they explore a science & technology convention in the middle of the night. But this adventure has lasting consequences as they accidentally break an unknown device which sends them travelling through parallel dimensions. As Liam and Louis adjust to living each day as their various alternate universe selves, experiencing all sorts of different things that could have been, at least they have each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Power in the 'verse(s)

**Author's Note:**

> An AU of AUs fic, inspired in part by 90s television shows "Quantum Leap" and "Sliders".
> 
> Mix can found on [8tracks](http://8tracks.com/bekrah/distant-sun) and [spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/hyunnir/playlist/4qO4jkPIy5gnzHovqt13sX)
> 
> So many thanks to Bek/[backbackforward](http://backbackforward.tumblr.com/) for being my artist collaborator, making such a great header and mix, and being an awesome cheerleader/beta. Everything you did for me helped me so much in finishing this fic and inspiring me to do the best job I could.
> 
> Also thanks to Izzy for being the first person to read the first part of this, and Seti for listening to me while I plotted the whole thing out.

 

[ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/khelwi2/media/coverfinal.jpg.html)

 

**[The night before: 30 July, 2015]**

It was a bad idea to begin with, and Liam maybe should have stopped it once he saw Louis pull out an actual lockpick set. But there was a difference between knowing something was a bad idea and not wanting to do it. Liam can’t lie to himself, he was onboard practically before Louis even suggested it.

“It’ll be classic,” Louis had said. “A recce to remember for ages.”

They had arrived in Indianapolis a day before their show at the Lucas Oil Stadium and as usual, Liam and Louis had decided to stay on the bus instead of going back to the hotel with Niall and Harry. The bus was parked in the loading area under the stadium, which normally would limit their troublemaking options to the inside of just one building, but this stadium was attached to multiple nearby buildings by skywalks. The building manager had helpfully explained to their team earlier how they could walk over to their hotel, other hotels, a couple of office buildings, and even over to the shopping mall, without ever stepping a foot outside. They could also get to the building next door, the Indianapolis Convention Center.

A convention center wouldn’t be something that would be interesting enough for Louis and Liam to explore under ordinary circumstances, but then Louis found out that it was currently hosting a convention that focused on cutting edge technology and the newest developments in science and engineering.

“What if it’s like the Stark Expo or something?” Louis had said. “We’ve got to get in and see it!”

It was relatively easy for them to get into the main building, but the actual “expo” part was behind a locked door. Shockingly, Louis actually manages to pick the lock on the door to get them inside and Liam loses the chance to pretend to be his old sensible self.

“You’re getting too good at that,” Liam says, shaking his head as Louis sends a triumphant and smug look his way.

They swing the door open and when they don’t immediately hear the shrieking of an alarm, they proceed inside.

Liam can barely see a thing. There are no windows in the hall to let any light in from the city, and the faint glow from the exit signs around the room only serve to give them an idea of how enormous the space is. Liam turns around in a circle, holding up his phone, but the flash is barely strong enough to illuminate more that a few feet in ahead of him.

“We should have brought real flashlights,” Liam whispers, but his voice still seems to echo in this dark and silent room.

“Next time,” Louis says. He’s keeping his voice down too and it makes him sound much more hesitant than Liam is used to.

Louis briefly takes hold of Liam’s wrist to start to pull him down the aisle that was closest to the door they came in. They walk slowly, looking at everything they can. They stay as quiet as possible by a mutual unspoken agreement, nudging each other and using their flashes to direct each other’s attention. It should be boring, Liam thinks, since he can barely see anything and he doesn’t really understand what he can see, but the longer they spend in this room, the more excited he feels.

Suddenly, there’s a loud rustling noise that breaks the silence of the room. They both spin around towards the disturbance and Liam knocks his hip into Louis’s, accidentally checking him into a nearby table. Then they hear a chirp. There must be a bird living up in the rafters in here. They have just enough time to breathe a sigh of relief before the table Louis hit tips over, and whatever device it held emits a blinding flash of light.

Liam’s disoriented for a long moment. When his eyes readjust to the meager light on his phone, the table is upright again. Louis must have righted it. But whatever device was there isn’t in his direct line of sight anymore. “Fuck,” he breathes. Should he find it? Put it back on the table even if it’s in pieces?

Louis grabs hold to Liam’s arm and starts pulling him back the way they came in. “Let’s get out of here! C’mon.”

That sounds like a better plan to Liam. They take off running, still clutching at each other, and don’t stop until they’re back on their bus.

“Holy shit,” Louis huffs.

“I know!” Liam shouts back in his best Monica Geller inflection.

Louis holds out his pinkie finger and Liam hooks it with his own. “And we’ll never speak of it again?” Louis asks, meaning ‘we’ll wait at least three months before converting this experience into an interview anecdote’.

Liam moves their connected hands up and down. “Yeah,” Liam says, meaning ‘yeah’.

It’s only just after midnight so they sit up for a while, playing video games and riding out the adrenaline high of mischief well managed before Liam makes them go to bed. They do have a show the next day.

 

**[The next day: 31 July 2015]**

Louis starts checking the local news sites as soon as he wakes up the next day. He tries to talk a good game to Liam, but he really hopes that they didn’t break some unique prototype that cures cancer or some shit. He would definitely feel like he had to turn himself in if that was the case.

But there’s nothing.

The convention has a Twitter hashtag and everything, and after scrolling through all 137 mentions, he’s seen nothing about any break-ins or vandalism.

He chalks it up to Niall’s Irish good luck, which he credits for most of the amazing things in his life (something supernatural has to be responsible for One Direction’s success), puts the matter out of his mind, and leaves a sleeping Liam behind to find some food and see if anyone’s up for a kickabout before that interview or photoshoot Louis vaguely remembers is scheduled for the afternoon.

Luckily, Niall falls into step with him on the way to their canteen and is up for keeping him company. Once they get outside and set themselves up a temporary goal between the buses, Louis has the strangest feeling that something is wrong.

“Were our buses always this colour?” He asks, indicating the dull gray. “I could have sworn they were blue this year.”

Niall shrugs, “They look gray to me.”

“I know they’re gray now,” Louis says, slightly exasperated. “I just thought they weren’t, before. Like yesterday.”

“Were green on the Europe leg.”

Louis rolls his eyes. He knows they were green, Niall couldn’t shut up about how green was his favourite colour and that the buses were so beautiful. He aims his next kick right at Niall’s face, but Niall brilliantly heads the ball back to him. This leads to an epic session of keepy uppy, and as they smash their current record, Louis puts his unease about the buses out of his mind.

The weird feeling comes back though, that night during the show. He catches Harry changing the lyrics to Happily and You & I, which isn’t normally something that would shake him, and the fans seem to know exactly what changes he’s going to make. Like he’s done them before, and Louis has somehow never noticed. And, yes, Louis may maintain a distance from Harry during public appearances and performances, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t pay attention.

Besides those odd moments, the show goes really well. And Harry and Niall join him and Liam on the fun bus for a rare band bonding night, and they all finally agree to start the Star Wars marathon that Liam’s been talking about for the last month. Of course Harry and Niall are asleep by the time Obi Wan is defeated by Darth Vader, but Louis still thinks it was nice of them to join him and Liam for a bus night.

Still, they are pretty lame. “Amateurs,” He scoffs out loud, making Liam giggle.

“Hey, did you notice that thing?” Liam asks then, keeping his voice low.

Louis frowns. “The lyrics thing?” It must have been bothering Liam too.

“Yeah. It’s impressive, right? How organised the fans came be when they coordinate these things.”

“I thought maybe Harry had tweeted about it,” Louis says.

“Nah. I checked after the show. It was probably one of their projects.”

Louis isn’t sure if he agrees, but he turns back to the movie instead of thinking about it any more.

 

**[31 July 2015, again]**

Liam wakes up in a hotel room, feeling really weird. He doesn’t even remember going to bed last night. Wait. Wasn’t it a bus night again? Last thing he remembers he was talking to Louis in the lounge. Why would he be in a hotel?

His tour suitcases are all in the corner of the room where they usually are on hotel nights. He knows that the days tend to run together when they’re touring, but it doesn’t usually feel like this.

He grabs his mobile off the bedside table and feels even stranger. It’s his Australian phone. Did he bring the wrong one to America? It starts ringing, Louis’s picture showing up on the screen. He answers it, but it shouldn’t even work here.

“It’s Friday again!” Louis sounds frantic. Liam feels confused.

“What do you mean? What’s going on?”

“Liam! It’s Friday. Again. Yesterday was Friday and today is Friday too. Am I being pranked? Or is this like a Groundhog Day thing and oh god. Do you remember yesterday, is this just me? Please tell me this is some sort of trick.”  

“I remember yesterday being Friday. We had that show, in Indiana? Was that where we were?”

“Yes, and the bus was gray and everything felt off and now it’s Friday again.”

Liam doesn’t remember anything in particular about the bus’s colour, but he turns on the telly to look for a news station to confirm the date for Louis. It confirms something else for him as well. “Also we’re in Australia. I think we’re not supposed to be in Australia right now.”

“We’re in Australia?!?” Louis shouts and while Liam is pained to hear such a loud noise through his phone, he’s also happy that he can hear Louis through the wall.

He knocks on the wall between them. “I think I’m next door. Want to come to mine?” Louis doesn’t even respond, just disconnects their call and lets himself into Liam’s room.

“We’re in a suite,” Louis explains. Liam nods, because that makes sense.

Liam takes in Louis’s wild eyes and disheveled hair. “Want to hide under the duvet, order room service, and pretend like the outside world doesn’t exist?”

“Yes.” Louis says emphatically, and crawls into bed next to Liam.

After they’ve eaten and Louis has moved his refuge to Liam’s shower, he opens up his phone, curious about what it could contain. There’s a couple of unopened texts from that morning from Niall about his and Harry’s golfing plans. He sends back a thumbs up and couple other emojis from his recently used list. “I don’t think Niall and Harry are affected by whatever this is,” he calls out to Louis. He can’t quite make out Louis’s muffled reply. He googles his own name and sees a video link to a recent appearance on an Australian TV show. They must be a promo tour. He clicks on the One Direction entry on Wikipedia and reads it. He’s not sure what it normally says, but most of the information looks correct except, “It says we won X-Factor?” Hmmm. He clicks around on Wikipedia for a bit, trying to remember the right phrase.

“What was that?” Louis asks, finally coming out of the bathroom.

Found it! “Alternate universes, yeah?”

“What?"

"I'm trying to research our situation. Maybe we're in a parallel dimension?"

"Oh, like you mean _Crisis on Infinite Earths_ sort of thing?”

“Yeah. Look at this, it says we won X-Factor.” He hands Louis his phone to read.

“So we're in a world where everything is the same as ours, only we won X-Factor and that means we’re in Australia in July? I don’t think that makes much sense.”

Liam waves his hand at Louis. “But your theory, that we’re in Groundhog Day does? How’d we get to Australia if we’re living the same day over and over?”

“I don’t know. But one Wikipedia entry does not equal multiverse. You know anyone can change those, right?”

“Australia.” Liam says pointedly.

“Alright, I concede that point.” They both flop down onto Liam's bed, laying next to each other and staring up at the hotel room ceiling. Louis sighs. “So we majorly fucked up something at the not Stark Expo.”

“Looks like it.”

 

They have a band meeting when Niall and Harry get back from the golf course. Louis calmly and rationally explains what’s going on. Niall almost chokes on air, he’s laughing so hard. “Great story! Amazing. You guys are right nutters.”

Harry just shrugs at them. “Sounds cool. Are you guys writing a book? The Jenners did that. Came up with a story. And got a ghost writer and all. It’s a pretty good book. Kendall told me about it.”

Louis throws his hands up and storms off. "I told you they'd be useless at this!"

"Looks like Alternate Dimension Louis still has a flair for the dramatic," Niall says before erupting into giggles again.

Liam tries to keep a straight face, but Niall's laugh is contagious no matter what universe he's in. "This is really serious!" He manages to say before doubling over, stomach hurting with the force of his laughter.

When he finally gets control of himself he heads over to Louis's room. He almost loses it again when he sees the petulant look on Louis's face, but keeps the giggles at bay. "Wanna go back to ignoring the outside world?"

"Yes."

They don't know if the switch comes at around midnight or exactly then, so as the witching hour approaches, they keep an eye on the clock. At 23:59, Liam reaches over and squeezes Louis's hand tightly. "See you on the oth-"

 

**[Day 3]**

A heavy bassline thumps and Louis feels it all over his body, vibration deep within his bones.

There are people all around him.

Lights are pulsating with the beat.

He's got a drink in one hand, something glowing in the other one. This drink is the best drink he has ever tasted.

The music is ace too. It's like he can see it.

It's fucking beautiful. This is beautiful fucking music.

There are hands touching his body. They are beautiful fucking hands.

For a fleeting moment, Louis feels like there was something, something he was supposed to be doing, or thinking about doing. Dancing is better than thinking though.

So Louis dances.

Someone hands him a water, and he swings his head around to look at who. "Ollie! It's my mate Ollie, I know him."

"Yep, you do know me," Ollie says. "Drink your water."

Louis listens. Ollie is a smart lad, and water is good.

Ha, lads, Liam's not a lad. He’s Louis's boy.

There's a new song playing. It's even more beautiful than the other ones. And Louis knows it. Louis knows this song! "I sang this song! Me and my band, it's on our second album." This one isn't as good as theirs, but it's still a beautiful song. One of the best ones that he didn't write, because it was before he wrote all the songs. He likes writing songs. He should write a song right now!

Ollie laughs at him. "You are so high right now."

Louis nods. That sounds about right. It’s not a high he’s used to, but it is wonderful. Everything is wonderful!

"Are we at the Warehouse?" He shouts over the music.

"Yes, Louis," Ollie says. He's in Doncaster! This shit is crazy. "That's where we've been all night."

Louis shakes his head, and momentarily feels like his brain is rattling around in there. "S'wot you think. I was in Melbourne an hour ago."

"Ha! Good one, Louis!" Someone else says.

Louis has to turn his whole body to focus on who else is there. It's Luke! "Ha, hot friend Luke!"

"What?"

But Louis is too busy grooving to explain. He raises up his right hand to wave his glow stick around. "Where'd all my tattoos go? My arm looks so naked!" Ollie and Luke are saying something, but it's too hard for Louis to follow.

Dancing is brilliant, but after a while things start to get blurry.

And then they're outside. "M'tired now, lads."

"He definitely can't get himself home."

That's so funny. "Don't even know where I live!" Louis says while giggling. Then he's in a taxi, pressing his cheek against the cool glass of the window. This would be better if someone was petting his hair.

"Stop it, Louis, I'm not petting you." Luke is stupid. Horrible mate, not hot at all--

 

Louis wakes up on an unfamiliar couch with a pounding headache and a note stuck to his forehead. The note reads: _went to work, called out sick for you, lock up on your way out -L_. His first thought is that it's from Liam, but then he remembers hanging off of Luke and making it extremely hard for him to get the two of them into his flat. Then he looks at the second part again. Work. This Louis had work today and was out like that last night. He shakes off the shame of poor life choices that's he's not responsible for, for once, and tries to figure out where he is.

Locating his mobile would be a good first step.

It takes a few minutes, but eventually he finds it inside one of his trainers which had somehow wound up in Luke's kitchen.

He'll use his GPS to get him to the right bus and go check out his mum's old place. It'll be nice to see her, she hasn't been able to come visit the tour in a while, and oh shit, Liam. It's just gone four, so they've been in this universe for 16 hours and Louis hasn't even tried calling him. There's no Liams in his phone's contacts. They're obviously not famous here, or at least Louis isn't. What if Liam's a solo act? Or if there's a One Direction, but he's not in it? His hands are shaking too much to type into the Google app. Shit, shit, shit! They had done fuck-all yesterday. Why hadn't they taken the time to come up with some sort of contingency plan for finding each other? Something like-

A Facebook notification pops up on his phone, reminding him that he has unread messages.

Liam is fucking brilliant.

Liam’s first message was from just before 8 this morning: _haha your fb is public, was dead easy to find you. I'm at uni! In birmingham! My flatmates some bloke I dunno but hes on my course aand theres a test i need to take today (o_o) will talkto you later!_

The second message is a mobile number since Liam had forgotten to include it in the first one.

Louis still needs to vacate Luke’s flat, so he starts gathering everything he assumes is his gear while he rings Liam.

“Hello?”

“Oh my god, Liam Payne! I can’t believe I got your phone number!” Liam tries to tell him to shut up, but Louis can hear him laughing.

“So are you okay then?” Liam asks. “I was hoping you’d get my message, and I was going to try and figure out another way to contact you, but I had to go to class.”

“Yeah, you’re a university boy here, right? How was the test?”

“Oh, man, Lou, I was bricking it, I can’t even remember the last time I held a pen when it wasn’t just to sign my name. But this Liam, he’s in music studies, and it was the production course. So I completely smashed it! I can’t believe I already know something that they’re teaching in a uni course!”

"That's great!" Louis says with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. God, he's starving, he hopes he's got some money. "That was a good idea, by the way, the Facebook thing. We should do that tomorrow too if we end up apart again."

"Yeah. Hope we'll be together though."

Louis finally finds his wallet. It looks like he has enough for a visit to his favourite chippy. It'll be nice to go there for once without the fear of being mobbed. Then Liam's last statement sinks in. They've been so lucky that they ended up together twice already. Really, what are the odds of that many different universes where One Direction got put together in the first place, much less stayed together for five years? What if they don't see each other again, and can't figure out how to get home?

No.

Louis won't let that happen.

He pushes the worry aside. "My plan was going to go eat something and see about visiting my mum. Do you want me to get the train to Birmingham instead?"

"No, you should go see Johannah. Give her a hug from me, yeah? And maybe I'll swing by my parents house, have tea with them!" Liam sounds really excited and it makes Louis smile. No matter what else changes around them at least Liam will always be _his_ Liam.

 

**[Day 4]**

Liam thought that with his experience touring the world for the past four years, he'd be used to it, waking up and not knowing where he is. But this situation is so far beyond that. It's absolutely terrifying. Also, it doesn't feel like waking up, not when the Liam he is now - whoever that is - wasn't asleep in the first place.

It’s more like a long blink combined with a brief moment of vertigo. One second he was at a desk in a cramped room in Uni student housing, and then he’s laying on his back in the dark with a laptop balanced on his knees. Once he adjusts, he’s relieved at the familiar coziness of being in a bunk on a luxury bus. He crosses his fingers and pulls back the curtain and Louis is shaking his head as if to shake off dizziness in a bunk directly across from him. Liam practically launches himself across the aisle and fits himself in with Louis, laying on top of him and squeezing him tight. Then it gets a little hard to breathe as Louis’s arms wrap around Liam, hugging him back.

“Do you think,” Louis says, speaking directly into Liam’s ear, “that we could be back? It could be done?”

“We are on the bus.”

“No, we know we’re on _a bus_. May not be ours. Not really.”

That’s true. Maybe it would be best for him not to get his hopes up. Liam sighs and rolls off of Louis, toward the inside of the bunk, hitting the wall of the bus with a loud thump. “Ow,” he says, pouting.

Then there’s a knocking from below them. Liam can just make out Zayn’s muffled voice saying, “Shut up boys, ‘m sleeping.”

Liam had been looking at Louis when they heard Zayn’s voice, so he sees the immediate transition in his mood. How his whole body goes from happy and relaxed to rigid with tension. Louis keeps his gaze steady on the ceiling, avoiding any eye contact with Liam.

“We’re definitely not home,” Louis whispers, and then pushes himself out of the bunk and stalks off into the back lounge.

Liam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Zayn’s here. So he’s still in the band in this universe. Okay. That’s obviously possible and completely okay. He feels sort of dumb for how out of sorts it makes him feel. He’s been travelling through actual alternate universes, why is it so shocking that they’ve landed in one where their bandmate didn’t leave the band?

Louis’s pacing the lounge, chewing on his thumbnail, when Liam goes to find him. “I think we should tell him,” Liam says.

“Tell him what?” Louis hisses. “That we’re from another universe? Or that in our universe he’s a prick who left me--us, left us?” Louis stops moving and sits in the corner of the sofa and brings his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs. He turns to look out the window before he speaks again. “You know right? That he texted me?”

Liam shakes his head. He didn’t know that. He and Zayn hadn’t exactly been out of touch, though it did take a long while before those first texts started between them. They haven’t quite worked their way up to an actual phone conversation, but it’s not like there’s been complete radio silence. He sits down next to Louis, careful to leave an inch of space between them.

“Last week,” Louis continues. “Or yesterday actually, Thursday. You know what I mean.” He doesn’t have to say that he’s not texted back. Liam can tell.

“Yeah.”

Louis turns to face Liam, and tilts his head so it rests against his knees. “I don’t think I can do this.” He says quietly.

“You can.”

Louis shifts just slightly to lean towards Liam, and Liam takes the hint and wraps his arm around Louis’s shoulders. They sit in silence for a long time before Louis speaks again. “So, what’s our plan?”

“I think we should tell Zayn just that we’re from a different universe. See if he can help us.”

“Harry and Niall weren’t any help,” Louis tries.

“Yeah, but Zayn’s actually smart.”

 

Liam’s right, Zayn is smart, but that doesn’t mean he believes them when they get around to telling him later in that day. But he does agree to help when Liam pleads, “Just pretend like you believe us and this could be a real thing. What do you think we should do?”

“Find the device, obviously.”

Louis smacks himself in the forehead. “We didn’t even figure out where we are today, Liam!” Liam winces, oh yeah. That is usually step one.

“We’re in Indianapolis,” Zayn answers, looking amused. “Where were you before?”

“Doncaster,” Louis says at the same time as Liam replies, “Birmingham!”

“And Melbourne the day before that,” Liam adds.

“On Wednesday?” Zayn asks.

“No, it’s been the same Friday every day,” Liam says.

“But Indianapolis is where we were on Thursday, so this is great.” Louis gets out his phone and starts typing. His face falls. “Only there’s nothing going on at the convention center here.”

“Do you remember what the convention was called?” Zayn grabs his laptop out of one of the spare bunks. Liam can only remember the words ‘science, engineering, and technology’, but it turns out that is enough. “Found it! It’s being held in Pittsburgh. And we’re heading there tomorrow.”

“But we won’t be getting to tomorrow, didn’t you listen to us at all, Zayn?” Louis’s tone is edging towards cruel, so Liam grabs his wrist and squeezes.

“It’s not his fault.” Liam says, under his breath.

“Um.” Zayn looks uncomfortable, so Liam tries to smile at him though he can tell it’s a little shaky. Zayn looks away, back down at the laptop. “Um,” he says again, “there’s an exhibitor list online? So like, we can see if anyone is claiming they created multiverse device?”

It turns out that there’s hundreds of exhibitors attending the conference, so they each sit with their own laptop and go through a different section of the list. Liam doesn’t understand about a third of the words he’s seeing, and that’s just their brief descriptions, but he’s still trying.

Zayn breaks their researching silence. “You guys aren’t just fucking with me are you?”

“No, we’re not.” Liam says.

Zayn nods and flips his computer around to show Louis and Liam the screen. “Is this the device you broke?”

Louis leans in to get a better look. “It was really dark, but the shape looks right. Liam?”

“It could be it.”

Zayn zooms out from the picture of the device. It had been part of a picture of a whole booth. “They’re called Kaplan Quantum and I only clicked on them because I thought their description reminded me of, like, the tesseract from Avengers. ‘Kaplan Quantum will be presenting empirical evidence of the applications of their quantum computer, the practicalities of manipulating subspace pockets, the harnessing of zero-point energy, and how that energy can be stored.’ That’s like definite comic book, science fiction sounding, innit?”

“Yeah, Zayn. It is. I think you actually found it,” Louis says, his tone still painfully polite to Liam’s ears.

They aren’t able to get in touch with anyone at Kaplan Quantum because so many of their employees are in Pittsburgh and the remaining ones aren’t willing to forward the questions of boy banders on to their bosses. Then they have to stop their research since they have an interview and then soundcheck and then a Meet & Greet all before the show. But Liam isn’t discouraged. They have more information today than they did yesterday, and tomorrow they can try again.

 

Liam spends most of their pre-show rituals fretting over how it’ll feel to have Zayn on stage with them again. Louis tells him not to worry about it, but Liam can’t help it. It’s only been a few months, but they’ve been rehearsing a lot more than they normally did during this tour, trying to make sure they had all these new harmonies and solos down and now he’s supposed to forget all of that and go back to their old arrangements like it never happened.  

During the show, that feeling of unease never truly leaves him. He tries to fall back into the old habits of his stage interactions with Zayn, but it’s like that trying to not think of elephants thing. And he keeps distracting himself by trying to gauge how Zayn’s feeling about being here. He seems normal, happy onstage as any of them, happy to be performing with them, but that’s exactly how Liam thought Zayn seemed at the beginning of the tour in their world.

After the show, Harry and Niall head straight for the quiet bus and Louis surprises everyone, including Liam, by joining them.

“Just feeling a bit under the weather, lads,” Louis says convincingly. “Should probably sleep it off.”

Liam raises an eyebrow at him, trying to silently ask if he should join Louis. Louis shakes his head slightly. Bus 1 it is then, just him and Zayn.

“So what is it? What did I do to Louis?” Zayn asks as soon as the bus is moving and Liam has no chance to escape. “In your world, or whatever?”

“Are you happy?” Liam counters. “Happy being with us, with all this touring relentlessly, being constantly scrutinized, singing songs you don’t really like?”

“What? Liam, I like our songs.”

Liam had a plan, he had started forming it the moment he heard Zayn’s voice and saw Louis’s reaction. The plan consisted of him avoiding this exact line of conversation, getting through the day without confronting any of it, but now it’s like he just can’t stop himself. “Do you really though?”

Zayn takes his time, seeming to consider his words carefully for Liam’s sake. “I mean, they’re not really my type of music, not really, and I guess I don’t feel as much ownership over them as, like, you and Louis do. But I don’t not like them.”

Liam nods. “Louis doesn’t mean to take it out on you. I know it, because you’re our mate and we still love you, but Zayn, our Zayn, he left us. Quit the band a couple of months ago.”

Zayn goes completely still, his expression blank and hard for Liam to read. “Was it in April?” He asks in a quiet voice. “I, um, had a moment, when we were on break in April when I thought about it. Like, just never coming back. Really thought about it.”

Liam shakes his head. “No it was March for us, he left before the leg was over, and like, we’ve not really spoken since.”

“Oh.” A look of hurt passes across Zayn’s face momentarily, and Liam feels awful. He hadn’t wanted that.

“Sorry. It just really sucks, you know?” Liam says.

Zayn takes his time before answering, “No. I don’t. I can’t really imagine it.”

“Last year, neither could I.”

They sit in silence for a while, both of them lost in their own heads. Liam wishes there was something he could do or say, to make Zayn or himself feel better. But he can’t think of anything.

 

**[Day 5]**

Louis wakes up to the sound of an alarm blaring next to his head. He blearily fumbles with his mobile until it stops making the awful noise and forces himself to sit up rather than fall back asleep. His alarm was probably set for a reason, he thinks, as he takes in his surroundings. He’s relieved to see that he’s in a rather posh flat rather than another tour bus.

He knows that at some point in the future, he’s going to have to deal with his unresolved Zayn feelings. Especially if this blinking through universes thing decides to throw them together again. But if he can avoid it a bit longer, he will.

So...posh flat. Alarm going off at the crack of dawn. Very nice view of...not London. Try and think on that later, he tells himself, and tries to clear his mind, hoping that he can go through the motions of his morning routine automatically. It works, mostly, and Louis is able to move through this flat as if it were his own, as long as he doesn’t focus too much on what he’s trying to do. Whenever he starts thinking too hard, he falters, so he distracts himself by singing the Postman Pat theme song in his head.

“All the birds are singing, and the day is just beginning,” he sings under his breath as he pours his tea into a travel mug and makes his way outdoors and into a waiting black cab. The driver takes off without any direction from Louis, which Louis hopes means that this is his cab. Then he turns his brain back on, and recognises that he’s being driven through Manchester. He entertains the idea that he’s a Premier League footballer on his way to the training ground while he looks Liam up on Facebook, before he realises that they’re headed toward the city’s center and not out to Carrington.

When they turn onto Quay Street, it hits him like a flash. _Coronation Street_. That’s all that will come to him, so he googles himself as he walks into the soundstage, and finds that he’s got a small recurring role. On Corrie! He smiles to himself. His mum loves this show.

Louis doesn’t have a trailer of his own, so he hangs out in the craft services area for a good part of the morning, studying the sides he’s been given for the day. Then he’s off to the familiar routine of wardrobe, hair, and makeup. It’s made even more familiar by the sight of Lou Teasdale in the Hair & Makeup area. “Lou!” He shouts at her, beyond delighted to see her, even though she definitely spent half an hour playing with his hair just yesterday on tour.

“Down, you,” Lou laughs, shaking her head and unknowingly echoing Louis’s thoughts. “As if I didn’t just see you yesterday.”

Louis, it turns out, is quite suited for life as an actor. Most of his day is spent as a glorified extra, fake drinking a pint in the Rovers Return in the background as Liz confronts Tony about something dramatic. And when it comes to actually filming a couple of short scenes that feature his character, he’s got his lines all memorised and is able to hit all of his marks by the second take at the latest.

He’s got some downtime between his scenes, so he heads back to Hair & Makeup and bothers Lou until Liam finally messages him back. Then he spends a good hour texting back and forth with Liam, talking about their days.

Liam’s been having a harder time shutting off his brain and letting his alternate self’s memories come to him. Louis sends him the tip about Postman Pat, which he felt made a big difference for him this morning, and Liam promises to try again tomorrow if he needs to. He was able to figure out just from context clues in his flat and mobile that he had a job working the fryer at a chippy. And that he’s possibly dating one of his coworkers, a girl named Kenzie. So he’s been there, just winging it, for the last few hours.

 _Wait, you’re sitting around texting me on your break instead of making time with your bird? She’s gonna get jealous._ Louis sends.

 _Maybe ill just tell her im friends with a famous actor to impress her._ Is Liam’s response.

_Using me for my fame? Disappointing Liam. How did you guess you’re dating her btw? Did she send you a pic with her tits out?_

Liam sends back the blushing face emoji.

 _Liam Payne!_ He sends with a few monkeys covering their eyes.

_I deleted it rightaway._

_Well, you know...don’t let the pictures leave your phone._

Liam sends a string of the laughing while crying face.

Then Louis gets called back to set, and as the P.A. is threatening to take his phone away, he just manages to send a quick goodbye to Liam before he goes back to work.

 

**[Day 6]**

Liam’s tried every different method that Louis has thought up, and yet, he’s not been able to get even the slightest fragment of a memory from the mind of any of his alternate universe selves. Instead, he’s had to rely solely on investigating their mobiles. Thankfully, so far he’s always had the kind that his fingerprints work to unlock; he hasn’t even had to guess at a passcode yet.

He scopes out the mobile briefly in between brushing his teeth and washing his face for a second time that morning. Intellectually, he knows that he’s in a completely different body than yesterday, but working over a fryer for 8 hours in the previous universe has left a level of grease on him that he really feels could have traveled over with him. Eventually, he has to concede that the fight against the phantom uncleanliness is futile, and moves back into the bedroom of his small flat. His wardrobe, it turns out, is much better equipped to inform him about his life than the mobile today, as he sees the half a dozen brown uniforms hanging there that tell him he works for UPS.

“It’s the best job, like, ever,” Liam tells Louis when they finally get a chance to talk a couple hours later. “Like, maybe popstar is better. Probably. We get better money and all, but driving a delivery van is so cool! I get to drive, all day, and everyone is so happy to see me and get their packages. And it’s a great workout! Lots of lifting, some core work...” He pauses, realising that Louis hasn’t said anything in a while.

“Mmhmm, that’s nice.”

Liam frowns. Louis sounds distracted, and that’s okay, like, he doesn’t have to be hanging on Liam’s every word or anything. But it just makes Liam feel a bit dumb, that he’s been going on and on. “Okay so, I need to go. Get back to my route,” Liam says, thinking it’ll be better to end the call there. “I’ll talk to you later?”

“Yeah. Later, Li.”

Liam chews on his bottom lip and tries to push off the thoughts of how he could have read the situation differently, spun the conversation to be more interesting to Louis. It’s not really a big deal, and he’s sure it’ll stop bothering him if he would just stop trying to overanalyze it.

“Okay.” He says to himself, and turns the GPS in the van back on, returning to his route.

 

**[Day 7]**

The first thing Louis sees when he wakes up is David Beckham’s face staring down at him. It startles him, making him jump and nearly fall out of his narrow bed. Slowly, he realises that he’s in his old room at his mum’s old house. But in his world, his Beckham poster had been on the back of his door, not on the ceiling over his bed.

He closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. He’s not quite ready to try and glean any information from this world yet. The past two days have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for him, going from a relatively nice life as a working actor in one world to a disappointing mess of a struggling one in the next. In just one day, he had had to field two rejection calls, miss an audition when it was delayed past the start of his shift at Topshop, and endure a lecture from his flatmates about how much a burden he was on them because his share of the rent was over two weeks late.

So, it’s particularly fitting that he’s back at his mum’s today, since yesterday’s Louis was on the brink of having to give up and come home.

Maybe in this world it’s for a visit, or just for the summer.

When he feels a bit calmer, he gets up and starts looking around his room to catalogue all the other differences there are from the room in his own memories. Everything looks so familiar, but it’s all slightly off in a way that’s disturbing him much more than when he’s woken up in completely foreign bedrooms. He has an urge to touch everything, like that will somehow make it his rather than this other Louis’s.

His eyes are drawn to a cork board that’s full of ticket stubs. Louis had hung one in his room when he was seventeen and had proceeded to post a full year’s worth of evidence of gigs and movies and festivals he attended before he left for X-Factor and then forever. He spends a long time looking at the more recent items, curious as to what sort of experiences this Louis has had. There’s also a bit of University of Liverpool paraphernalia, and Louis gets the feeling that he’s a student there.

Before he gets the chance to clear his mind and figure anything else out, his mum calls him down to help her get Daisy and Phoebe ready for their day camp while she manages Doris and Ernie.

He tries to slyly inquire about Fizzy and Lottie while he’s putting together lunches, and learns that they’re both working today and that Louis himself has not gotten a summer job this year since he’s relaxing before he starts his student teacher placement this fall.

He’s going to be a teacher. He takes a moment to be proud of his alternate self.

Louis knows he’s pretty successful in his real life, being an international pop star and all, but he’s been feeling removed from that world recently and teaching is something completely different. It’s the first time yet he’s had anything close to a grown-up career in any universe.

In higher spirits, he volunteers to walk the twins to the community center for their summer day camp. On the way, he makes a big deal about not knowing the way they need to walk so his sisters think he’s joking. Daisy laughs at him, but Phoebe complains that he did this bit last week. Louis very honestly tells her that he has no memory of last week whatsoever.

When he gets home, he’s able to quickly find Liam and message him. Then he goes to bond with his littlest siblings while he waits for Liam to call. He takes some pictures and then posts one of the three of them to his Instagram without really making the conscious decision to do so. He’s not really sure if that was his own habit or maybe this world’s Louis is just as addicted to social media. He’s got just over 600 Insta followers, which seems high, right? For a not famous bloke? Louis’s ability to judge numbers has become warped by the past five years.

After his mum leaves for work, bringing the younger twins to their daytime carer, Louis is torn between the idea of wasting some time watching trash telly or trying to learn more about this world. It’s fun, figuring out the differences, but sometime it can just be exhausting. Luckily, he doesn’t have to decide, because that’s when he gets a text from an unknown number.

_I’m in Wolverhampton and work at the factory with my dad. I tried to play along but building planes is hard. Skivved off sick and am hiding in my flat._

Louis starts to compose a text back, but calls instead. He barely lets Liam say hello before asking, “Do you have any money?”

There’s a pause and a noise that Louis imagines is Liam fumbling for his wallet. “Yeah. I have some. Why?”

“We should hang out! I haven’t seen you in days! I’m in Donny again, but we could, like, get a train, meet in the middle, wherever that is.”

“Yeah, okay. It would be nice to see you. Miss you.”

Oh no. Liam is starting to sound a little sad, and Louis isn’t there to fix it immediately. It sucks. “I’ve missed you too, Liam,” Louis says, feeling slightly weak for having admitted it so freely, but knowing it’s always best to be honest with Liam. “Think about it though. We haven’t been able to have a day out, in public, just me and you since...ever. We’ve never been able to be regular lads together.”

“Yeah. We could actually shop without shutting down an entire mall. Or go to the cinema without buying out the whole bloody room!” Liam says, his speech speeding up as he got more excited.

Louis mentally pats himself on the back for his excellent handling Liam skills.

“But like, I don’t want to spend all of this Liam’s money.”

“I wonder if what we do affects them at all,” Louis says. “I mean, will they wake up tomorrow and not know what happened in their world today and be left with less money and unexplainable messages in their mobiles?”

“I don’t know. But we maybe we shouldn’t mess anything up too much, just in case?” Liam’s take on the whole matter is characteristically sensible, which makes Louis itch to cause some sort of mischief.

He starts rearranging other Louis’s clothes while Liam talks about if they should give themselves a noninterference prime directive. Louis suspects that Liam’s been watching too many sci-fi shows as research for their situation. He makes vaguely affirmative noises when Liam pauses, and swaps the contents of the sock drawer with shirts and decides to move all his pants onto the shelf in the closet. While reaching for the pants in the very back of the drawer, his hand hits something rubbery and cylindrical. Unthinking, he pulls it out of the drawer and almost drops his mobile in shock.

Other Louis has a dildo! And he’s hiding it in his pants drawer at his mum’s house!

Hastily, he throws it back into the drawer and stops his minor mischief project. Shit. He needs a distraction, now.

He interrupts Liam’s theorizing and to ask where they’re going to go. After some googling, they decide to meet up in Derby, because it’s about halfway between Wolverhampton and Doncaster, and it’ll make Niall happy if they ever decide to tell him about it.

After texting his mum to let her know he'll be out late, Louis jogs to the train station, testing this Louis' fitness level. His hamstrings are a bit tight. He promises himself that he’ll stretch properly once he’s on the train.

After the stretching though, he’s at a loss for what to do with the next hour. It’s the perfect opportunity to try and do the memory thing, learn more about this Louis, but he finds himself hesitating. It’s exhausting, he justifies, following his earlier thought process. And unnecessary, really. He’s already interacted successfully with his mum and siblings, and he’s just going to be hanging out with Liam for the rest of the day, so it’s doesn’t really matter who this Louis is. It’s not that he’s scared of what he may find out or anything. He just doesn’t need to know.

He flips the phone over in his hands a few times before shoving it in the pocket of his trousers. His rationalisation against poking around in his memory makes it against the rules to take a closer look at his Instagram and other accounts too. Instead, he turns to surreptitiously pay attention to a nearby couple who are having a quiet row over a their holiday plans. It’s a good distraction.  

Once his train pulls up to the station, Louis spots Liam waiting for him on the platform. But Liam doesn’t seem like he’s seen Louis yet, so Louis sneaks up behind him and jumps on to his back. Liam catches him easily, hooking his arms around Louis’s thighs and laughing like jumping on him was the best thing Louis could have ever done. Immediately, something in Louis feels more settled, relieved, like there had been a pressure on his chest he wasn’t aware of, and now it’s gone. He leans forward to press a kiss onto Liam’s cheek and then points forward. “Let’s go!”

They’re both starved and have Niall on the brain, so they end up at Nando’s without even considering other food options. It’s pretty crowded, so Liam waits in the queue to order while Louis scouts about looking for a table. He finds a large one that’s only occupied by two girls decked out in flowery blouses and wellies, with feathers in their hair. Standard festival look, he decides, and wonders where they’re going.

“Let’s go join them,” Louis tells Liam, pointing them out. “Think we could pull ‘em?”

“What? Why would we?”

“I dunno, we’re both single, so why not? Just to see if we could. We’ve been famous for a while, I’m betting it’s weakened your game.”

“Girls aren’t a game, Lou.”

“Yeah, okay _Harry_. You know what I mean.” Liam frowns at him, but follows him to the girls’ table anyway. And then smoothly steps in front of Louis to smile brightly at the girls and politely ask if they can join them before Louis can make his opening salvo.

“It’s just so crowded in here.” Liam continues, bringing his arm up and rubbing at the back of his neck while looking sheepish. Louis can see both the girls practically gaping at him before enthusiastically telling them to sit down.

Point for Liam.

Louis turns on his charm to get their names, Emily and Lauren, and find out where they’re heading, the Y Not festival. By the time Louis and Liam’s food arrives, they’re having a lively debate about Snoop Dogg vs. Snoop Lion and their favourite songs and Louis has pretty much forgotten his ‘pulling’ mission and is just enjoying himself. He’d forgotten how much fun it was to just meet people.

“We should go,” Louis tells Liam. “See Snoop. It’ll be a blast. I love a festival.”

“Yes, you should!” Emily agrees. “We’re getting a ride with some friends, I can see if they’re got room?”

“It would be fun,” Liam concedes, “but I don’t think I could afford the ticket. Not this last notice.”

Louis pouts along with the girls. He wants to tell Liam to forget about his noninterference deal and that they can spend this Louis’s money, but he doesn’t. “We’ll just find something else to do,” Louis says before turning back to Emily and Lauren. “Thank you for a lovely lunch, ladies.” They all exchange twitter handles and Lauren promises to post lots of pictures from the festival, so they’ll feel like they were there.

Liam throws an arm over his shoulder as they walk out the restaurant. “C’mon, we were at Snoop’s album release party like 3 months ago, we can learn to live with this one disappointment.”

It makes Louis smile, thinking back on that night. “We were such rockstars at that party.”

“Yeah!” Liam agrees. “Probably the rockstar-iest we’ve ever been.”

“But we’re not rockstars here,” Louis declares. “We need to be as un-rockstar-iest as possible here.”

“I doubt we’ll have a problem with that.”

“I don’t know, Liam, I may make some diva demands by accident. It could happen.”

“But--you just said--” Louis silences him by putting his hand over Liam’s mouth.

“Are you trying to make sense out of things I’ve said? I thought you knew better by now.”

“Rfgkjgt hsjhs ddwkj,” is Liam’s muffled reply.

“I forgive you.”

 

They wander around the city until they find themselves outside a multiplex cinema. Ant-Man is playing, so naturally that’s what they decide to see. But once they’re in the dark movie theater, Louis feels strangely amped up. He absentmindedly bounces his leg and fidgets and pokes at Liam until Liam sighs and grabs his hand and laces their fingers, holding him still. Louis squeezes Liam’s hand a few times rhythmically and Liam squeezes back, repeating the pattern. For some reason, that makes Louis calm, and he can turn his focus back towards the movie.

When the film is just reaching its climactic finale, Louis feels his mobile buzzing in his pocket. He waits until the credits have rolled and they’ve seen the post credits scene before checking it. It’s a request to hang out from someone the other Louis has labelled ‘Big Dick Dylan’. He scrolls back up a bit to look at their previous conversations and...yeah. This is definitely a booty call.

He copies a response other Louis had sent a few weeks ago, ‘ _not tonight,_ _soz, out with mates, another time..._ ’ and sends it. Then he finally looks over to where Liam has stood up and is stretching.

“Everything alright?” Liam asks, gesturing to the mobile still in Louis’s hand.

“Yeah,” he says, shoving it back into his pocket. “We should sneak into another movie. Let’s see what else is about to start.”

They stick around and watch two more movies, but all of their options for another after that would be ending after midnight and they don’t want to miss the ending to anything. Also, Liam’s starting to get that slow blink look he gets when he’s overtired. Louis tries to make fun of him for it, but Liam pouts at him, so he has to stop. They find a pub with comfortable booths to spend their last hour in, and Louis doesn’t say anything when Liam scoots over to rest head on Louis’s shoulder.

It’s fine. Liam’s resting. And it’s not the end of the world if he has to sit quietly and think about his day. Nothing too earth shattering happened, not really. It’s not at all a big deal if he’s gay in this world. Louis knows lots of brilliant gay people, and now he knows that in another world he is too.

It’s completely fine.

 

**[Day 8]**

Liam thinks he was in mid sentence when he slips into this world. He has no idea what he was saying, but just knows that he was speaking. There’s a beautiful woman, looking at him, waiting for him to continue. “Um,” he says uselessly. “Sorry, I--so what do you think?”

“About the chanting baseline in that song of Niall’s? Or our plans to visit Orlando? You were kind of jumping around on topics there, Li.”

“Sorry...babe,” he chances. “I guess I’m kind of scattered. How are you tonight?”

While she is talking, he takes in his surroundings. Hotel room, definitely. Probably American one, from the snack wrappers on the end table. And then he realises he knows her. Sophia Smith! He had such a big crush on her in sixth form. She mentioned Niall, thank god! It’s been way too long since they’ve been in a band universe.

Before Liam has to worry too much about keeping up appearances as the besotted boyfriend he suspects he is, there’s a knock and a whir as the door is unlocked by a keycard.

“Are you decent?” Harry asks, poking his head into the room with his hand covering his eyes.

“Yes, Harry, it’s safe,” Sophia calls to him, laughing.

Harry walks fully into the room at Sophia’s okay and grabs Liam’s hand, pulling him off the bed. “I need him for official band business now.”

“That’s fine, I need some sleep and this one will be up for ages, I’m sure.”

Liam gets up to follow Harry out of the room, and then has a moment of inspiration that makes him turn back to give Sophia a quick kiss on the cheek. “Sleep well, I’ll bunk in with Haz or someone so I won’t disturb you.”

She says goodnight and waves him off as Harry reminds him to grab his phone. “You’ll need it to tweet the link.”

Liam hums a bit of melody as a response and starts looking through his mobile for answers as they enter Harry’s candlelit room. It’s a fire hazard, really, all those candles Harry tends to leave unattended, but Liam suspects that this universe’s Liam has already had this argument with this Harry as often as he’s had it with his.

“Alright, Haz, what do you need?”

“The tweet, Liam, you were going to go first.”

He opens up his mobile and the Twitter app. Thankfully, he’s got a tweet saved as a draft, so he posts it without having to ask Harry what he’s supposed to be doing. “Okay, done.”

“Good. How long do you think I should wait before putting mine up?”

It would probably be a good idea to read what he just sent out into the world, wouldn’t it? He shrugs at Harry and feigns a yawn while he looks up the tweet. Oh shit. He just tweeted out a surprise link to their new single. Was he supposed to do that?

He looks over at Harry, who also has Liam’s tweet open on his mobile, and Liam tries to gauge his reaction as he reads it. “I like yours, but I think maybe with my current minimalist aesthetic, I should just do the link with no explanation. That’s pretty ‘Harry Styles’ of me, right?”

“Yeah,” Liam says, relieved. “That sounds good.”

Liam can’t believe they just did that, surprise dropped a new single like they’re Beyonce or someone. It’s exhilarating. He and Harry watch as their retweet and favourite numbers go up and up and share some of the best fan reactions between them. Before too long, Niall’s there, letting himself in to Harry’s room.

“Me and Tommo are doing the Spotify links, yeah?”

Harry answers in the affirmative before Liam has to, but when Niall asks where Louis is, Liam feels horrible. He should have gone and found him by now. He manages to get one of Louis’ spare room keys and, more importantly, his room number from Niall without Niall or Harry figuring out anything is wrong with them.

Liam lets himself into Louis’s room and is glad to see that Louis’s awake. And alone. Not that having Sophia Smith in his room is something to be upset about, and it’s not like he would want to deny Louis having someone too, it’s just possibly going to be an awkward day for him. Or a fantastic one. He shakes his head to try and focus himself. The single.

“Hey Lou.”

“Hey.” Louis says, sounding subdued. “We’re in a hotel, so not home yet, right?”

“Nope. Have you been able to do your” Liam waves his hand around at Louis head, “mind thingy yet?”

“Nah, all I’m remembering is stuff that we’ve done. Like band stuff, and I can’t figure out if it’s me or this Louis or both.”

Liam nods, pretending like that made sense to him. “But this world seems pretty cool so far.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’re surprise dropping a single. Like right now. I mean, I already tweeted it, and Harry did too. I was supposed to.”

“God, imagine if you weren’t supposed to. That would definitely ruin your not messing things up permanently in other worlds thing.” Liam laughs, and Louis continues, “I guess I’m supposed to tweet something too?”

“Yes, that’s why I came to find you.”

“How about this?” Louis asks as he sends out a simple text smiley face. Not even an emoji. Liam just doesn’t get Louis sometimes. Then he copies the Spotify link that Niall sent, and Liam makes him write an intro so he won’t be compared to Harry.

“So, Drag Me Down, huh? Is that the one Jamie sent us last month? I wonder how our version sounds.”

Again, Liam feels like an idiot, he hadn’t even thought to listen to it. He wonders if he’s got it saved somewhere, but instead of wasting any time, he just clicks the link in his phone and buys it.

“Every sale counts,” Louis comments approvingly.

They listen to the song four times in a row, bobbing their heads to the beat. It is the song that Louis remembered, but in their world they hadn’t decided if they would record it yet. By the second listen, Liam is singing along under his breath and by the fourth, he’s harmonising with the chorus.

“You’re such an overachiever,” Louis says, and pushes him over on the bed before pinching and tickling Liam along his overly sensitive sides. Liam could easily escape, but he lets Louis pin him down instead.

“We definitely need to record this,” Liam says between giggles, as the song starts over for a fifth time. “When we get home.” _When_ . He emphasises in his head. Not _if_.

That’s when Harry and Niall let themselves into Louis’s room and join them, knocking Louis off of Liam and moving around so they can all fit on the bed. “This was a good idea, Li,” Harry says, leaning his head down on Liam’s shoulder. Liam reaches up and runs his hand through Harry’s hair. He’d missed Harry these past few days. “The response is great.”

“And everyone’s complaining that we don’t let them sleep,” Niall says gleefully, still scrolling through his twitter feed.

Liam’s phone buzzes, and he sees a text from their management asking him to call into Radio 1 for a phoner. He sends back a confirmation and lets himself close his eyes for a moment. This world has been great so far, but he has a feeling that this day will be the longest one yet and it’s only just begun.

 

“I’m having a baby!” Louis hisses in Liam’s ear later that day as they take a break from rehearsing the new song. Liam had been completely distracted, flashing back to X-Factor level anxiety, worried about learning a song that day that they would perform live for the first time that night. So, he hadn’t been paying much attention to Louis and what he was going through in this universe.

But a baby? Wow.

They’re probably at a good stopping point, so Liam grabs Louis by the bicep and drags him over to the corner of the room. “Be right back,” He calls out as he and Louis scramble out into the hallway.

“That’s amazing!” Liam says, and then belatedly tries to keep his voice down. “Who’s the mum?” As soon as he asks the question, Liam realises how bad it’ll be if it’s Eleanor. The breakup, though it had been coming for a while, had really affected Louis, and if the two of them are happily expecting a child in this world, Liam worries that it’ll be like twisting the knife.

Louis frowns. “An American stylist. According to the tabloids and my texts, we’re not really _together_ together.”

“But the texts, they’re alright, right? Like you two get along?”

“Yeah. We’re doing okay. It’s just...A baby. And we’re on tour. All those universes where we weren’t famous, I wasn’t having a baby, but in one that’s so much like ours?” Louis sounds overwhelmed. Liam can’t imagine how he’s feeling, but he hugs Louis anyway.

“You’re going to be a great dad one day, Lou.” He can feel it when Louis’s breath hitches and he just squeezes him tighter.

Liam steps back eventually and watches as Louis puts himself back together. He wonders how long they’ve been rehearsing while Louis kept himself from reacting.

“Want to see an ultrasound?” Louis asks, his voice totally even. Liam nods enthusiastically and makes grabby hands at his phone.

Eventually, they make it back into the green room to finish rehearsals. They even realize that they’re in Indiana again, but there’s no sign of the convention.

“Let’s just forget about it for a while, yeah?” Louis says, still staring at the pictures on his phone. “We’ll have other days to figure out getting home.”

 

**[Day 9]**

Louis blinks and finds himself in a club.

Again.

He looks around and doesn’t recognise anyone in his immediate vicinity. But he does spot the corridor that leads to the loos, and makes for it, gauging his level of sobriety as he moves through the crowd.

Bit drunk, not high this time, he can still think at least semi-clearly. Good.

He makes it to the loo and relieves himself before washing his hands and splashing water on his face. It’s really hot in here. He takes a moment to stare at himself in the mirror. His eyebrow is pierced. It looks wicked, actually.

He fishes his mobile out of his back pocket, and uses the GPS to find out that he’s in Ibiza. Oh, and Liam’s actually listed in his contacts this time around! It’s the first time that they’ve known each other, but not been in the middle of promo or tour. Louis tries to ring Liam, but while someone answers, it’s too loud on Liam’s end for him to hear anything.

His fingers fumble over his’ mobile’s keyboard. Texting Liam takes a lot more work than he expected it to, but he finally manages to send off a greeting and location inquiry. He makes his way back out into the main room of the club and tries to keep an eye out for anybody that he recognises. By the time he makes it to the bar, he has a string of messages from Liam.

_Im in a cab, on my way to “space”? ??_

_I think that’s what the driver said_

_I think he thinks Im drunk_

_Am i a astronaut?_

_I think i am drunk, i cant go to space if im drunk!!  !!! what sort of astronaut am i?_

Louis laughs so hard his side starts hurting. It takes him a while, but he responds, explaining that if Liam is also in Ibiza, Space is one of the nightclubs. According to the bartender, it’s actually not too far from the one Louis’s in now, and once Liam’s figured out how to check his GPS and texted Louis back to confirm he is in fact in Ibiza, Louis leaves to go meet him there.

Their cabs let them out at practically the same time and the doorman ushers them inside past the line as the few paparazzi outside the club snap photos.

“Guess we’re famous here!” Louis shouts into Liam’s ear as they walk into the wall of sound emanating from the open-air nightclub. He wonders if he accidentally ditched Alberto or someone at the last place. But it’s easy to shrug off that guilt when he and Liam are offered a table in the VIP area, and Liam, _Liam_ , gets the idea to indulge in bottle service.

That’s when things spiral.

The night blurs out into a montage of dancing and drinking and drinking and dancing. At some point he becomes aware of the ever-present phones taking pictures of them, but he just doesn’t care. They hit two more clubs before sunrise, which they watch from an afterhours breakfast spot on the beach.

It’s a miracle they make it to Liam’s hotel room before crashing.

Louis wakes up late in the afternoon to find himself in the bathtub, wrapped up in the hotel duvet like a burrito. His head is pounding. But his questionable choice in sleeping location pays off when he’s able to minimally shift and rest his head on the blessedly cool porcelain.

He’s just starting to fall back asleep when Liam rushes in to direct his sick into the toilet. The smell of it nearly turns Louis’s stomach as well, but he manages to get out of his burrito blanket and out of Liam’s space before it’s too late.

By the time Liam emerges from the loo, Louis is stood in front of the open minibar, contemplating a hair-of-the-dog hangover cure. Liam comes up behind him and groans loudly at the sight of the little bottles of liquor, burying his face in the back of Louis neck as he wraps his arms around Louis’s middle. Louis lets himself lean slightly back into the cuddle, and tells Liam that he’s already called down for their standard hangover room service order. Usually it’s Liam doing this for him, so it gives him a small sense of accomplishment, that he got to do this little thing to take care of Liam today despite the fact that he also feels like he could keel over at any moment.

Then they eat, take turns showering, and drink as much water and juice as they can stand.

Louis’s close to feeling nearly human again when they’re joined in Liam’s suite by a woman that he vaguely recognises from their Syco team. Rebecca, maybe?

“Liam! Glad to see you’re alive. I know we’re in Ibiza, but next time you plan to go on a bender, could you give us a forewarning? Or make sure your mobile is on? We’ve been trying to reach you for hours!” She glances over to the corner of the ‘living room’ where Louis is sitting curled up in the overstuffed armchair and Louis can practically see the colour drain from her face. She nods at him saying, “Mr. Tomlinson, hello,” in a painfully polite tone of voice.

Louis looks at Liam, confused, and sees the same expression reflected back at him.

“If you’d excuse us, I need to speak with Liam privately,” She continues.

He can see Liam starting to protest, so Louis shakes his head, trying to convey a ‘go with it’ message. It must work, since Liam lets her direct him to the bedroom where she pointedly shuts the door behind them. He thinks about getting up and trying to listen through the door, but figures Liam will call for him if he’s needed.

The conversation likely only lasts a few minutes, but since Louis doesn’t have anything to distract him, it seems to take forever before Liam’s back within his view.

Then Rebecca (or Rachel?) lets herself out, still so professionally polite it makes Louis want to scream. As soon as she’s out of earshot, Louis turns expectantly to Liam.

“I’m performing at Radio 1’s event tomorrow night,” Liam says. “Rebecca was making sure I knew when to show up for soundcheck and all. And checking on me since...here, just read it for yourself. It's one of the nicer articles.”

Liam hands Louis his mobile, open to one of those tabloid websites. Louis reads,

_No Longer Heading in Opposite Directions?_

_Ex-bandmates Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson were spotted last night on a wild and raucous night out as they hit up all the popular Ibiza party spots. The duo, whose feud was reportedly the reason for the band’s breakup 3 years ago (_ **_Exclusive: Niall Horan Opens Up About 1D Split_ ** _), seemed to have put their mutual hatred behind them as they drank, danced, and joked around all night. Maybe Payne, 21, with his first solo album due to be released at the end of August, was getting industry advice from his former coworker. Tomlinson, 23, is best known for his recent chart topping collaboration with drum and bass giants, Rudimental (_ **_Check Out Our Choices for Song of the Summer_ ** _)._

Then there’s a gallery of pap and fan photos from last night interspersed with hysterical fan tweets.

Liam’s watching him expectantly, waiting for his reaction, but Louis can't meet his eyes. It's a lot to take in. His stomach clenches, the nausea he experienced earlier threatening to return. Morbidly, he clicks the first link and proceeds to read, in detail, all about his and Liam’s constant clashes, bickering, and sniping that strained the band until they all reached a breaking point after their first headlining tour. Louis can hear Liam breathing heavily from where he’s reading along over Louis’s shoulder. Louis can feel some water gathering in the corners of his eyes which he tries to blink away.

“Can't believe Niall’s the one who blagged. Wouldn't have guessed that,” Louis tries to joke, but it falls flat and the silence stretches out between them.

“It's not us,” Liam says finally. “That's not us. We didn't...we had that chat, got over all that...”

Louis lets himself look up, meeting Liam’s eyes at last, and the look on Liam’s face, how openly hurt he is by all this reminds Louis of his earlier goal, to make Liam feel better. He can still try. “No, you're right. This Louis must have been a right wanker, to never have sorted it out with you.”

“It could have been my fault, this Liam’s. I was so tightly wound, stubborn-”

“And I was terrified,” Louis interrupts.

Liam frowns at him, “Terrified? But we were all scared, Louis.”

Louis shakes his head, “Not just of performing or X-Factor; I was scared of you. You thinking-- knowing--that I wasn't good enough.”

“I never thought that.”

“I know that. _Now_ I know that. Then? Not so much.” Liam slings his arm over Louis’s shoulders and pulls him in close to Liam’s side. Louis allows it for a few moments before shrugging him off and pinching his side. “This is so unfair, us having to deal with this shite in the tired and emotional state we’re in. No wonder we’re all bleary eyed. Time to start drinking again.”

Liam puts up a token protest before accepting the drink Louis mixes him. It's still early enough that they can get ‘day-drunk’ and they’ll be out of this world before the next hangover hits.

Entirely by accident, Louis finds that he has tickets to Annie Mac’s party that night at Ushuaia. “Want to be my plus one?” He asks, doing his best to wriggle his eyebrows at Liam.

Liam bites his lip. “Dunno. They’ll definitely be paps and all there, and last night is still trending.”

“Exactly why we should go all out. Give them something new to write about.”

He gives Liam his best mischievous grin, the one that got them into this world jumping mess in the first place, and watches as Liam slowly returns it. Yeah, he’s got Liam on his side again. All is right with the world.

 

**[Day 10]**

Liam wakes up in one of the most comfortable beds he’s ever been in, feeling extremely well-rested despite the lack of sleep he’s had over the last couple of days. Maybe there is a benefit to this whole universe hopping thing that they’ve been doing. He rolls over onto his back, reaching his arms up for his customary morning stretch and notices that there’s someone in bed next to him.

The person has the duvet pulled up over their head, so Liam can only see a closed eye, slope of a nose, and sliver of a cheekbone, but it’s enough for Liam to recognise Louis. He smiles to himself and lets himself lay there, contented, for a few more moments. These are the worlds that always go best, when they’re able to face everything together.

He gets out of bed as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake Louis, but unable to just lay there any longer. He pulls on a pair of tracksuit bottoms before it even registers that he had only been in his pants.

That’s...odd. He’s comfortable sharing a bed with Louis, of course he is, but he customarily keeps more clothing on when sleeping next to a mate.

There’s a pack of fags on the table next to the balcony door, and Liam is hit with a much stronger craving than he’s used to having. Apparently this alternate has not cut back as much as Liam has recently.

But he’s immediately glad for the craving since it made him step outside where he is treated to a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower. It’s been an incredibly productive morning so far: he hasn’t even been up long enough to have tea and he’s already found Louis and their location. However, all too soon, his calm moment is abruptly shattered when he hears a muffled shout and thump from inside the room.

The door to the toilet shuts with a slam just as Liam dashes back inside.

“Lou?” He tries, knocking on the door. He can hear movement inside the room, but can’t figure out what it means. “You okay? What’s going on?”

The noise stops. “Liam? You’re here?” Louis asks and Liam’s worries immediately increase. Louis’s voice has that higher pitched tone he gets when he’s particularly panicked.

“Yeah, Lou, I’m here. Isn’t that lucky? We’re together, and in Paris.” He keeps talking, telling Louis about their view and his various guesses on why they’re there in this universe. “I haven’t gotten the chance to look anything up yet,” He continues. “Do you want me to?”

“No!” Louis’s response comes quickly. “Don’t...don’t look into anything right now. Can you just keep talking for a bit longer?”

So Liam does, talking to Louis through the door about a secret that Harry shared with him two worlds ago and the newest idea for a song he had and which items on the room service menu sound both the most French and the most appealing.

Finally, Louis says that he’s okay to come out. His voice still sounds off, but as soon as he steps out of the loo, Liam sees why.

He’s a girl.

Wow.

That. That was not what Liam was expecting.

Louis is a girl.

And a really beautiful one, Liam can’t help but think it. He doesn’t look all that different, though his hair is longer and lips a little fuller, but there’s still that familiar sharpness in his cheekbones that Liam has regularly thought made Louis look a bit like an elf. And he’s quite...buxom, for such a small person. Louis’s always had curves, best bum out of the lot of them, and great, now Liam’s trying his best not to look at this version’s bum. He doesn’t want to be that guy, objectifying his best mate just because he happens to be really, really attractive to him right now.

“Say something, you twat,” Louis says once the silence has stretched on too long.

Are you okay? Liam thinks. Do you feel a lot different? Can I do anything for you? But what he actually says is, “Boobs.” He cringes and braces for Louis to hit him, but Louis actually laughs instead.

“Yes. Apt observation, Liam. Good job getting straight to the point.”

“Sorry. They’re, um, just, like, really good ones. Distracting.”

That time Louis does reach over to smack him on the back of his head. “You deserved that,” Louis says and Liam nods, agreeing. Then Louis pointedly picks up a discarded jumper and pulls it on. It still clings, showing off the curves on this Louis’s body, but at least the neckline is much higher than the one on the camisole that’s under it. “Anyway, I have a theory on why we’re here. Have you picked up on it yet?”

Liam shakes his head. He’s made a bunch of guesses to Louis already, but Louis must be referring to another one.

Louis waves his left hand in front of Liam’s face. Liam rears back a bit, expecting another attack, but when it doesn’t come, he actually focuses on the hand. There’s a shiny diamond ring on it. Liam looks closer, and then down at his own hand. Where he has a matching silver band on his left ring finger. Oh.

“Feels like a honeymoon suite, don’t it?”

Liam looks around the room with fresh eyes, taking in the decorative choices he had paid no mind to before along with the empty bottle of champagne lying on its side on the bureau. “Yeah,” he says, his voice cracking slightly. Louis shakes his head at him and starts snooping around the room while Liam sits there and processes.

He’s _married_ to Louis. Married to _Louis_.

Of course he is.

They’re probably devastatingly happy too.

He wonders how they met, how they got together. Did they clash as much upon first meeting as he and his Louis did? And if they had, they had probably been unbearingly cute, even when fighting, in a beginning of a romantic comedy sort of way.

He’s interrupted from his further musings by Louis making an entirely undignified noise. When Liam asks what’s wrong, Louis hands him Antoinette Tomlinson’s passport.

“Antoinette!” Louis shouts. “Not Louise or Charlotte or Felicite, or even Marie, no, my mum had to go and name me Antoinette? This is just wrong, wrong, wrong!”

Liam doesn’t really understand Louis’s reaction, Antoinette sounds like a nice enough name, but he doesn’t think this is the exact right moment to be arguing over anything with Louis. Instead, he attempts to look sympathetic and nods.

“I may not know much about being a girl, but I know me, and I am not an Antoinette. I refuse.”

Liam has a flash of inspiration and hunts down his mobile. “You’re right, Lou. Look. You’re in my contacts as Toni.”

Toni “Stark” Payne is actually what the full name is listed as, which makes Louis beam at him when he reads it. “I’m always right.” Louis states, triumphantly. “And I obviously still have great taste.”

And all of a sudden, Liam knows all the answers to his earlier questions. Liam and Toni met during X-Factor bootcamp. Neither of them made it through to Judges’ Houses, and there was no reprieve of a last minute group for either of them. But Toni had stolen his mobile and saved her number in it, as Toni “Stark” Tomlinson back then, and after days of agonizing he had texted her.

Liam has no idea how was able to, but it’s amazing, being able to see in his head how this world, this Liam’s life, has been different to his own. He starts to tell Louis about his breakthrough, but when they make eye contact, more memories hit him. Memories of kissing Louis--Toni. Of the first time they slept together. Of the sex they had last night in this very room.

Liam blushes, he can’t help it, and looks away as he feels his cheeks turning red like that would be enough to make Louis not notice. He fumbles his mobile as he tries to pick it up as a distraction, his fingers not quite working in concert with his brain.

“Alright,” he says. “Are you hungry? We should get food, right? Go walk around Paris, eat crepes or something, yeah?”

Louis snorts. “What sort of newlyweds actually leave the hotel room on their honeymoon?”

“Do you want to stay in?” Liam asks. Maybe he could just hang out on the balcony to get some air. He’d really rather not be alone with his thoughts, with the memories that aren’t actually his to remember, but it’s like flood gates. Now that they’re open...

Louis comes to his rescue, thankfully, interrupting Liam’s thoughts to answer, “Nah, when else will we get this sort of chance to run around Paris? But I’m raiding your suitcase, Payno, I will not wear girl clothes.”

“Aren’t all of our skinny jeans ladies ones?”

Louis rolls his eyes before conceding to that fact. “Fair point. But I’m stealing one of your shirts.”

“Again, how is that at all different from our everyday lives?”

“Shut up, Liam.”

 

Liam hadn’t expected his GCSE French to help them much, he had scraped by with a C, but he and Louis do a surprisingly good job navigating the city while avoiding the tourist traps. They do eat crepes, ones that are filled with ham and cheese from a cart in a park. Then, after deciding that neither of them really like art enough to try and fight the crowds at any of the famous museums, Louis makes the requisite ‘one direction’ joke and they choose a direction and start walking. They walk for hours, just enjoying the sunny day and ambiance of the city.

At one point, Louis pulls out his classic move of attacking Liam, pinching at his side and nipples, probably confident that Liam won’t be retaliating with a return nipple pinch against him in his current body. And Liam doesn’t, but he does catch Louis’s hands in his, protecting himself by keeping a tight hold. Eventually, he loosens his grip, but keeps Louis’s left hand clasped in his right one. He very deliberately tries not to think about how the two of them must look as they continue to wander the city.

They find a restaurant for dinner, le Relais de l'Entrecôte, that Louis recognises though he can’t quite remember why. But it’s perfect for them. Everyone is served the same meal, a beautifully cooked steak with a unidentifiable, but delicious, green sauce and perfectly crisp chips. When they finish eating, a waiter comes out and offers them a second helping. And then when they finish that they are presented with a dessert menu with about 20 different choices.

Fully stuffed and thoroughly worn out, they make their way back to their hotel. In the reception area, Louis makes them stop to talk to the concierge asking for recommendations for ‘the most romantic’ places they should go tomorrow night.

Liam’s perplexed, but tries to keep his face neutral. They won’t be here anymore in a couple of hours, much less tomorrow evening.

Louis repeatedly mentions that they’re on their honeymoon, and then it all becomes clear when, along with his recommendations, the concierge offers to send another complimentary bottle of champagne up to their room.

It’s always weird to remember that they’re actually millionaires in their real lives since even there, Louis has always delighted in getting things for free.

They spend their last two hours in Paris out on their balcony, drinking their authentically French champagne straight from the bottle, and testing Louis’s slightly different vocal range by singing through old harmonies until their voices are raspy and gone. It’s one of the best days of Liam’s life.

 

**[Day 11]**

If Louis could choose, he’d much prefer to blink over into a sleeping body in each new universe. Waking up is a familiar and easy feeling, even when you’re waking up in a completely unfamiliar and unpredictable environment. Blinking and suddenly being in a different location, different clothes, different mood, different body? That’s the absolute worst.

But unfortunately, in his regular life he’s always up well past midnight and many of his alternate universe selves seem to follow in the same mold, especially in worlds where One Direction exists.

Midnight has just passed and once again he’s slipped into an awake body. This one shouldn’t even be that disconcerting because he went from being nicely tipsy, laughing with Liam on a balcony in Paris, to feeling slightly high, laughing with Liam on a tour bus.

Then again, he did just blink from a female body to a male one, which is maybe contributing to his extra long moment of confusion.

Wait.

He shoves his hand down his pants to cup his dick and balls to reassure himself that they’re there. And they are. Because he’s a man.

“Hey! You’re a boy again.” Liam sounds a bit more stoned than Louis currently feels, but it’s still nice to hear the confirmation. “Like, physically, I mean.”

“Yeah, got my bits back.” Then he grabs Liam’s hand and presses it to his crotch to confirm it to him as well.

“Louis!” Liam giggles, snatching his hand back.

That was not the correct reaction, so Louis thumps his fist against Liam’s nads. Hard.

Of course this leads to Liam tackling him, which leads to a truly epic wrestling match on the floor of the lounge.

It only ends when Louis has been nearly completely pinned and he conveniently remembers that they need to check out where they are. Then they race to see who can figure it out first.

“My passcode’s different on my mobile,” Liam says. “So we’re not home yet.”

“But we’re in Indiana again. _And_ the convention is here!” This is the best shot they’ve had yet at figuring out how to get home.

 

They get up the next day at what is practically the crack of dawn for them, 9 in the morning, to avoid involving Alberto and Paddy and to get over to the convention well before any of their day of show obligations start. Liam’s wearing some fake glasses to try and blend in with the science types, and Louis put on an actual clean shirt and his smart trousers.

Liam hums the Mission: Impossible theme tune under his breath as they try and locate Kaplan Quantum at booth 2846. It feels like they had to walk a lot further then when they were here in the dark all those days ago. Finally they find the booth and Louis just stops.

What does he even say here?

So, not to sound crazy, but do you have a multiverse device capable of sending me and my mate body hopping through alternate universe versions of ourselves?

He looks at Liam, sure that he’ll see his panic reflected in Liam’s eyes, but Liam looks calm.

There are a few of the company’s representatives occupied with speaking to other interested convention goers, but conveniently the scientist who’s standing closest to their multiverse traversing device is alone. “Hello,” Liam says to her, in what Louis knows to be the poshest version of his accent Liam can do. “I'm am very interested in hearing about what you're presenting here.”

She smiles at them and starts with an introduction that Louis is familiar with from scouring the company’s website as thoroughly as he has in the past week. But all too soon, the descriptions of their services get more technical and Louis has some trouble following along. He manages to nod and keep his ‘listening’ face on while hoping Liam’s able to direct the conversation without his help. He glances at Liam and almost snorts as he sees that Liam has scrawled a few words on the inside of his arm as a cheat sheet.

“Hypothetically,” Liam says after an obvious check of his arm, “if something were to happen to this device, maybe if it fell off the table accidentally, leading it to discharge some of that-,” another glance, “potential subspace energy-”

“What do you mean?” The scientist asks, sounding like she’s afraid he and Liam are threatening to break her project. Again.

“He’s a bit of a science fiction fan,” Louis says, trying to change tactics. “Thinks your device sounds like it could send people to alternate dimensions it takes energy from.”

She frowns. “It’s not quite accurate to say it takes energy from alternate dimensions, though that’s actually a common misperception in the field of…,” her voice trails off as she seems to be lost in thought. “But what you’re proposing does have _some_ evidence that points towards…I’m sorry, will you excuse me for a moment?” She doesn’t wait for their response before grabbing a pencil and some paper from off the table and jotting down some numbers.

Louis catches Liam’s eye and motions for them to cross their fingers for luck as they wait for the scientist to finish her maths break.

They stand there in silence for a few minutes, trying not to break her concentration until suddenly she stands up and gives them a calculating look. “Are you messing with me, or are you here from an alternate dimension because you broke my life’s work?”

Louis is shocked, but still manages to recover before Liam loses the flabbergasted look on his face. “It was an accident,” Louis defends. “And look, your device is fine, not at all broken...here.”

“Okay, you both need to take like three large steps back from my stuff and stay there while I go tell the others I’m taking a break.”

She gets them to follow her to the mostly empty exhibitor’s lounge where she pours herself a large cup of coffee and makes Liam and Louis explain everything, in detail.

“This is so utterly fascinating from a scientific standpoint that it almost makes me forgive you for my work’s loss in your universe,” She says when they’re done. “But I’m still pissed about that.”

Liam gives her the puppy eyes, looking his most sincere and contrite while Louis does his best to keep his gaze firmly on the table in front of him. He knows he’s not able to project goodness the way Liam can, so his plan is always stillness and eye contact avoidance. It seems to work as their scientist sighs and mutters, “Alright. If it’s at all possible, I’ll help you.”

Louis and Liam simultaneously cheer, which startles the only other occupant of the lounge into spilling his coffee down the front of his shirt. The three of them just manage to hold in their giggles until the man leaves for the hallway leading to the restrooms.

“Okay,” she says, once they’ve all calmed down, “you guys need to give me some time and space to do some more calculations. I doubt I’ll be able to figure out anything conclusive for you, not before midnight, but I can try and get you as much information as possible.”

“I don’t know if we’ll have a chance to meet up again,” Liam says.

The scientist hands Louis her mobile. “Text yourself, I’ll call you when I’ve got something.” Then she closes her eyes and continues, “And just to make this the most awkward situation ever, can I get a picture with you?”

Louis laughed. “Love, with everything you’re doing for us today, how could we say no?”

 

Louis spends some time that afternoon acquainting himself with this world. It's amazing. They’ve fixed global warming, diminished the gendered wage gap, and even- “Hey, Liam!” He calls out as Liam comes into their dressing room, looking pale. “They’ve cured cancer here! This world is great.”

Liam shakes his head. “You haven't seen yet, then?”

“Seen what?”

“There's no way to explain it; this is the worst possible of universes. I'm going to go have a nap.”

Liam’s attitude is both intriguing and worrying. Louis sets off in the direction Liam just walked in from, hoping to find what he was talking about.

Turns out it was a who, not a what.

The green room that’s set up for them in this venue has a few tellys mounted on the walls and tall tables in front of them at bar height. It takes Louis a long time to realise that it’s Niall is standing at one of the tables, watching some ubiquitous American detective show, snacking on something. His hair is dyed black instead of blond, and there’s just something off about the way he’s standing, or maybe it’s how he’s holding himself, contained, like he wants to be smaller than he is.  

“Are you eating celery?” Louis asks, incredulous. Hummus and celery sticks actually. What the fuck?

“Hmm? Oh, hey Louis,” Niall says absently, not answering Louis’s question at all. Louis snaps his fingers and points at the snack, trying to get Niall’s attention. Niall gives him a strange look and mumbles something about it being filling. Like he’s eating just for sustenance and not at all for pleasure.

“Are you feeling okay?” Louis slings an arm around Niall’s shoulders and brings his other hand up to his forehead, checking his temperature. He’s barely made contact before Niall shrugs him off, stepping away.

“What are you doing? You know I don’t like to be touched. You and Liam are both being weird lately.”

“Sorry, soz. You’re right, I’m in a weird mood--you know what? I’ve got to go, get to a thing.” Louis stumbles over his words as he retreats from the room.

Liam was right, this is the darkest timeline.

 

That evening, after his post-show shower, he sees that he has a missed call from an unfamiliar number. The scientist! Liam’s having a conversation with Paddy, but Louis doesn’t feel too bad about giving some shit excuse before grabbing Liam and pulling him into a small, but private, cupboard and calling her back on speaker.

They’ve barely gotten a chance to say hello before she’s off, explaining her methodology and the degrees of error that change the possible outcomes and when the words she’s saying start having more and more syllables, Louis stops her.

“I’m sorry, it’s just, what does that mean for us. Like practically?”

“It means that I’m reasonably sure that you’re in a cyclical system.” He looks to Liam, and Liam shrugs. They wait. “When the power runs out, you’ll end up back in your own universe. Well, you could. There’s a large chance that I’m wrong, because this is all guesswork anyways, but I think you’ll get home.”

“That’s great!” Liam exclaims.

“But she could be wrong and we don’t get home,” Louis says.

“Yeah, but there’s a chance. And that’s all we need. We’re going to get home.”

Louis nods at him in response. He wishes he could be as confident as Liam. It’s true that now they’re got a little bit more than just blind hope, so maybe he can at least be optimistic. “Do you know at all how long we’ll be travelling? You know, before the cycle ends?”

“I think, _think_ , that it’ll be 22. On your 22nd universe changing, the power should be out and you’ll be home. In theory.”

“Please stop emphasising that it’s all just guesswork,” Louis pleads. “I’m trying to stay positive.” Liam bumps Louis’s shoulder with his own and grins at him in approval.

“Alright, you’ve got less than two more weeks of crazy universe swapping and then you’ll be fine and at home.”

“Thank you so much,” Liam says sincerely. “We really appreciate all the work you must have done today for us.”

“It was actually really interesting. I think I know what my next area of research is going to be. It’s just too bad I’ll won’t get any proof about if it all works out for you.”

“Yeah…” Liam’s face falls.

“We kinda need to go,” Louis interjects, looking at the time. “Is there anything else we should know?”

“Well, I have a lot more information about the probabilities and statistics, but no, not really. Good luck.”

“You too,” Liam says, “with your research.”

They draw out saying their goodbyes for another few minutes before Paddy is knocking on the door, trying to get them out of the venue.

It turns out that they’ve got a Star Wars marathon planned in this world too, and both Harry and Niall join them on their bus. Niall sets up the DVD and then sits as far away from the three of them as possible. Louis and Liam share a look of abject horror when they realise he’s started _The Phantom Menace_ instead of _A New Hope_. “Darkest timeline,” Louis whispers.

“Try and fall asleep, we’ll be out of here soon enough.”

 

**[Day 12]**

Now that they have an idea of how many worlds they should be visiting before they get home, Liam starts calling them by numbers in his head. And 12 is awful.

First, he wakes up in a sparsely decorated flat that with even less personality that a standard hotel room. He tries all the memory tricks that Louis taught him and the random wondering he used to access his memories in Paris, but nothing works.

One day, he promises himself, he’ll be able to access something from a world that isn't related to Louis. He’s determined.

Snooping around the flat leads to nothing, no clues about who he is or what he does. He is able to figure out that he’s in Birmingham, but that’s it. His mobile doesn't have any contacts saved in it, not even his parents.

He turns then to Google, but even that fails him. Louis, he finds easily; he’s all over social media and Liam learns that Louis works as a bartender in London at one of those posh, private clubs that Harry loves going to. Which probably means Louis is a bartender who hates his job, or at least today he will.

But Liam cannot find anything about himself.

Once he gets sick of staring at the plain white walls of his flat, he realises he needs to get out of there. He’d feel bad about missing work for this Liam, only he’s having a hard time feeling abstract guilt.

He did find car keys when he was searching the flat, but once he finds the car (in an underground garage that took him far too long to locate), even that is disappointingly unhelpful. It’s just a nondescript SUV, completely bereft of mementos or trash or receipts or any other evidence of use or life.

Still, it’s a car, so he’s able to drive over to his parents’ house in Wolverhampton, thinking he can at least see his parents even if they don’t know many details about his life in this world.

Only they’re not there. He doesn’t even get to ring the bell and ask if the strangers living in his old house know of the former owners, something he had imagined doing on the driver over, because the house itself isn’t there. In its place sits an empty lot.

 

“Do I exist?” He asks Louis over Facetime, sat inside his car which is stopped in a cafe’s car park. “Can you see me?”

“I can see you,” Louis says. “But! Maybe you’re a ghost.”

“ _You’re_ a ghost,” Liam returns, making Louis laugh. Then he explains everything he’s observed about this world so far while Louis nods and ‘hmm’s.

“Oh, maybe you’re an assassin-spy-secret agent, like Bond or Jason Bourne. That’s why you can’t find anything. Your parents have been re-located, your identity erased.”

Liam tries to find that prospect as amusing and exciting as Louis seems to, but there’s a much more likely reasoning that he can’t ignore. “Maybe I’m just a normal bloke who’s really boring and really lonely.” Really, really lonely. That’s the only thing he’s gotten from doing any of the memory tricks. A sensation of intense loneliness with the physical feeling of a deep bruise being pressed in the middle of his chest.

“Nah. You’re a secret agent in training and you’re failing your mission in stealth just by having this conversation over unprotected wifi.”

Despite himself, Liam can feel his lips curl up into a slight smile. “Okay. What’s my code name then?”

“Double-o-Payno obviously.”

Liam keeps asking questions until he and Louis have decided that this world is one where all Liams have been recruited into spy agencies. Obviously, his partner is Hemsworth, mentor is Neeson, archnemesis is Gallagher. Louis has Liam laughing so hard, he eventually chokes on air and starts coughing, doubling over.

“Okay,” Louis says, drawing out the word until it has two or three extra syllables, “maybe that’s enough excitement for you today.”

Liam shakes his head, still trying to catch his breath. He doesn’t want the conversation to end just yet.

“You’re turning all red, Liam.”

“M’fine.”

“I should go anyway, gotta start my shift soon. But I’m sending you an address, I found it earlier. Go there, stay happy.”

Soon after they finish saying their goodbyes, the promised text comes through with the mystery address. Liam is a little wary of just following without question, but he trusts Lou, and figures even a prank from him would be a welcome distraction today.

Twenty minutes of driving later, he ends his journey in front of a large, fenced-in park. A dog park. And there’s a large sign out front announcing that there’s a dog adoption event going on this afternoon. He grins to himself as he walks through the gate, maybe this universe’s Liam will wake up tomorrow with a new best friend.

Louis picked the absolute best place for him to go. There are just so many dogs! The ones that are up for adoption are wearing little orange vests and they’re running all over, with similarly dressed volunteers standing nearby watching out for them. Liam meets as many as he can, both dogs and volunteers, talking to the humans about their rescue organization while giving attention and affection to some of the dogs and throwing balls and frisbees for others.

Liam’s been there for about an hour, seriously considering starting the paperwork for a young Border Collie mix, when a man sidles up next to him. “You didn’t show up this morning,” he says, his tone casual.

Liam tears his eyes away from the dog to give the man a once over, and is struck by how utterly nondescript he is. Liam doubts he could describe the man in any significant detail even while he’s standing right there in front of him. “Did we have an appointment?” Liam tries to mimic the other man’s nonchalance.

“You could put it that way.”

All of the calm that Liam has gained from the dogs drains out of his body as he notices the man tensing up. Coiling as if a strike is imminent.

There’s three exits to this park.

The one closest to him is on the complete opposite side from where Liam left his car.

Liam angles his body towards that exit anyway; there are just so many dogs. And people. He needs to minimize the potential collateral damage.

Liam hears his own voice before he consciously decides to speak. “My apologies. Take a walk with me?” He starts for the exit, walking away without actually turning his back to the man completely.

The man follows.

Liam becomes aware of the fact that he is unarmed. Which shouldn’t be shocking or feel weird to him. He’s never touched a firearm in his life, much less walked around with one concealed on his person.

But he knows, as suddenly as easily as he knew where the exits in the park were located, he knows that this man is armed. With at least one gun and two knives, if not more.

They’ve reached the exit. There are no civilians nearby. Liam was right in thinking that its distance from the car park would guarantee its seclusion. The man is talking again, but Liam is mostly ignoring the words to focus only on his movements.

The man’s hand moves rapidly, pulling the gun. But before he can even point it at Liam, Liam has already moved towards him. In one smooth movement, Liam has taken the gun from the man’s hand and punched him in the throat with it. He follows that blow with a quick right hook which sends the man to the ground. Liam doesn’t wait to see if the man has been knocked unconscious before he’s gone, running away as fast as he can.

He pauses for a moment and throws the gun into some bushes. Then he runs at least a mile further before discarding his mobile.

Liam can’t believe Louis was right.

He is actually Jason-fucking-Bourne.

If it wasn’t so scary, this would be awesome. But it’s awful and real and there is someone, possibly someones, after him. He keeps running.

If he can survive the next 6 hours, he’ll be fine. Gone from this universe forever. Safe.

When he started running, Liam didn’t have a destination in mind more specific than ‘away’, but he must have instinctively picked a good direction since he starts to see signage pointing to a train station. He spends nearly all of the cash in his wallet to get him on a train to Scotland, the only ticketing option that won’t be reaching its destination until after midnight.

Upon boarding, he immediately makes his way to the gents, and tries to clean himself up from his impromptu workout. He still looks a right mess, even after washing up, but it’ll have to do.

Once he takes his seat, his leg bounces constantly, broadcasting his nerves to anyone who looks at him. More than anything, Liam wants to call Louis. Wishes that he hadn’t thrown away his mobile, but that’s probably how that man had tracked him down and Liam can’t risk it happening again.

He was hoping he’d be able to relax once the train was moving, maybe even be able to fall asleep, but he never does. He has no way to keep track of the time without bothering the other passengers, and he has nothing to distract him besides the view of the countryside outside his window or an old magazine some previous passenger left behind.

He uses the magazine as scrap paper, occupying himself doing maths, of all things. There are 3600 seconds in an hour and there’s got to be less than 4 hours left by now. Liam starts counting backwards in his head from 14,000. He tells himself he’ll be out of here before he gets to one. Just got to keep counting down.

 

**[Day 13]**

Louis blinks into a body right on the brink of an orgasm. He tightens his hand on his cock, stroking even faster. God, he’s so close. It’s less than a minute before he’s coming, and he can’t help the loud moan that escapes his lips.

That was intense.

He’s basking in the afterglow, stomach and chest covered in streaks of his own cum, when someone pounds on his door. His hotel room door. He hadn’t even noticed he was in a hotel.

The knocking intensifies. “Louis? Are you okay in there, is that you?” Liam is saying, overly loud and rushed and panicked.

Liam! Louis rushes over to the door to let Liam in.

Earlier tonight--in the last world--Louis had been fired halfway through his bartending shift for throwing a drink in a rich wanker’s face. He wasn’t sorry, the fucker definitely deserved it. But right after, he’d tried to call Liam to tell him the whole story, and he hadn’t answered the call. Louis had called him another 15 times over the past two hours, getting more and more worried with each missed call.

Unfortunately, Louis completely forgot about the state he was in as he flung the door open and pulled Liam in for a hug.

”What happened to you?” -- “Are you okay?” They both speak at the same time.

“Fine, I’m fine.” -- “It was so scary, Lou,”

“Scary?” -- “Spies and guns and...are you naked?”

Right. Louis abruptly realises that he’s still pressed against Liam’s chest and how that might be weird. He pulls away and winces as Liam’s t-shirt tries to stick to Louis skin.

“Is this?” Liam’s voice trails off.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Let me just-” He grabs the hem of Liam’s shirt and pulls it up over his head and off. “I’ll, um, get that cleaned up for you.” It’s only after he’s done it does it occur to him that he’s still standing there, starkers, and now he’s actively removed some of Liam’s clothing.

Yeah. He’s made this even more awkward.

He turns away and locates some discarded joggers and steps into them. When he bends over to pull them up, Liam starts coughing. “Did that cough follow you over from yesterday’s world?”

“No, I’m just, something in my throat.” Liam coughs again, deliberately, not meeting Louis’s eyes.

He follows Liam’s line of sight and sees that the telly is playing some generic hotel pay-per-view porn. Great. Louis grabs the remote and switches it off. It had obviously done its job already. “It was like that when I blinked over,” he starts to explain, though he’s not sure why he feels the need to do so. “Wait, what were you saying about guns?”

Liam leaps on the subject change immediately, and as he starts to tell Louis about his time in the last world, Louis has to sit down to process it all.

“An actual for real spy? While I was having to make pretentious cocktails and be polite to arseholes? You get all the fun!”

“Wasn’t that fun. I could’ve died.” Liam’s words are serious, but there’s a slight grin on his face by the end of the sentence, so Louis pretends not to be at all concerned.

“But you didn’t die. How exactly did you disarm the bloke?” He makes Liam demonstrate half a dozen times, with Louis pulling a water bottle on him as a gun. According to Liam, his other body had been able to do this ‘like a million times faster’, but even just what he remembers now is so cool. Maybe Louis should start taking karate or something, when they get home.

At some point they go through the motions to confirm that they’re in a ‘One Direction exists’ universe before they move across the hall to Liam’s room for one of their late-night song writing sessions. They’ve not had a good chance to work together at all with this whole universe thing, and Louis is feeling especially inspired. Luckily, it’s their policy at this stage in their creative process to never write anything down. If it’s good enough that they remember it later, it’s good enough to keep working on.

They’ve just worked out what may be the hook for yet another song about the joys found early in the AM hours when Liam sits up. “I hope Niall’s...Niall here,” he says.

“Yeah.” Even though their band universes are the most familiar to their real lives and often come with the luxuries of success, Louis finds that the small differences in them hurt badly. It shook his entire worldview to know that there’s an alternate universe out there where Niall is standoffish and unhappy.

Louis changes the subject back to the song, and they work on it for another hour before he begs off. He’s got to get some sleep at some point tonight. Liam offers his room if Louis wants to crash with him, but Louis knows that they’ll get distracted and stay up talking under the covers for a while longer if he stays.

As he opens the door to leave, Louis hears the sounds of someone running down the hall. The first thought that goes through his head is that fans have somehow gotten onto their private floor, but he still sticks his head out to look even though that goes against everything their security team has tried to instill into their heads for years. Luckily it’s Harry, decked out in his customary jogging outfit, running through the hallways while Niall follows on his segway shouting, “Mush, mush!”

Louis retreats back into Liam’s room, smiling. He drops back down onto Liam’s bed and waits for him to get out of the loo. He’ll crash here tonight.

 

**[Day 14]**

Liam’s not really expecting to blink over into their familiar hotel room recording studio setup. They’ve not often had back-to-back days in band universes, but he’s not going to complain about it happening now.

Louis is laying next to him, sleeping, curled up into a ball like a cat. Harry is recording and Niall is sprawled out on the other bed. Liam hopes that the recording equipment picks up Niall’s snores in the background, they’re actually synced to the beat of the song in a really interesting way. Liam’s contemplating poking Louis to wake him and let him see where they are, but before he can, Julian asks if he’ll go wake up Zayn for his bit.

It might be best to let Louis sleep.

Liam chooses to go through the adjourning door, correctly guessing at Zayn’s sleeping location. He goes through his particularly effective routine of waking Zayn gently, whispering his name and stroking his hand with the grain of Zayn’s rough stubble.

When Zayn wakes enough to smile at him blearily, it hits Liam that this is something he’s done hundreds of times in the past, but unless they end up in another universe like this soon, it’s something he’ll probably never do again. Even if he and Zayn get a chance to really reconnect one day in his real world, they won’t have this sort of relationship anymore, this intimacy that comes from shared circumstances and forced togetherness for months on end.

When Zayn shuffles off into the next room, Liam doesn’t follow. He lies down on the bed Zayn just vacated and stares at the ceiling. In his real universe, he and Louis and Harry and Niall had decided not to book a tour for their next album. They’d take some time off, finally get a chance to see their families and let this whole whirlwind of an experience set in.

But now he’s realising how much everything could change.

Liam’s interrupted from his worries by Louis, who comes and lays down on half top of him, throwing his arm and leg across Liam’s body and cuddling in close. “Zayn’s recording,” he says, lips brushing Liam’s neck as he speaks.

“I know.”

“Fucker still has the prettiest voice.”

Liam huffs out a laugh. He can hear it a bit, through the door. “Yeah. I love it.”

“Me too.” Louis sounds annoyed at having to admit this even though Liam would have never pushed him to do it. “Shhh, I’m sleeping now.”

“Okay.”

 

They’ve got a photo shoot that afternoon, and then a reporter is going to be following them around during their soundcheck and pre-show dinner.

“Liam! Eyes over here please.” Guiltily, he turns from where he’d been watching Harry and Zayn have a hug to face the camera. He’s trying so hard to really experience this moment, burn it into his memory, that he keeps getting distracted from what he’s supposed to be doing by trying to notice everything.

Before his solo shots are done, he gets reprimanded twice more, but Zayn had pulled Louis outside for a smoke break and he’s worried about how the rest of their day here is going to go if Louis picks a fight. His turn gets done soon after and he hurries off in the direction of the door while Niall takes center stage. But before he gets out to the smoking area, Zayn and Louis are running back in, both looking completely at ease with the other. Not fighting then.

“Leeyum,” Louis drawls out, adopting Zayn’s accent. “Zayn thinks we should do a Star Wars marathon tonight on the bus tonight. We should start with Jedi, right?”

Zayn shakes his head. “I don’t get why we would _start_ a marathon with the third one? Liam, agree with me.”

“Ewoks, Liam. You can’t say no to the cutest, violentest teddy bears ever.”

Liam shrugs. “Sorry, Zayn. I’m siding with Louis on this one.”

Later, when the movie’s over and Zayn’s left them alone in the lounge while he gets his rolling papers, Liam finally has a chance to ask Louis the question he’s been trying to ask all night. “So what happened? Did you make up with him?”

“That’s not our Zayn,” Louis says simply. “I decided I shouldn’t be mad at him.” Liam swells with pride over Louis’s maturity. But then Louis continues talking, “It’s not his fault our Zayn’s a betraying prick who I’ll never speak to again.”

“He’s not--” Louis puts his index finger over Liam’s lips and shushes him.

“It’s in the past. Let’s not fight over it. Besides, good Zayn’s coming back.”

“Good Zayn?” Zayn asks as he walks back into the room.

“Best Zayn ever,” Louis corrects as he makes grabby hands at the papers and sets to rolling a couple of joints once Zayn hands them over.

Zayn gives Liam a questioning look, but Liam just shrugs in return. They don’t have much time left in this world and Louis’s sort of right, it’s not worth fighting over when they can just enjoy each other’s company with no potential for drama.

 

**[Day 15]**

One moment after midnight and Louis is standing in the hallway of the convention center with Liam, lock pick set in his hand.

“Oh my god,” Liam says, voice echoing in the empty building. “Put that away, we are not breaking into that place again.”

Louis can’t help the laugh that escapes him as he pockets the tools. “Do you feel just a little relieved at the fact that we’re this dumb in this many worlds?”

“No. It makes me worry more and more about our survival.”

They race each other back to the bus and do some research into this world, but it’s sort of disappointingly close to their real one.

“This is boring!” Louis whines. “We’ve done this day twice in a row already, do we have to do it again?”

Liam looks confused. “What do you mean? We’ve got stuff to do tomorrow--today, you know. The photo shoot, the concert.”

“Or...” Louis says, pausing for dramatic effect. “We could run away.” Liam opens his mouth to protest, but Louis is too quick for him, blocking his words with the palm of his hand. “I promise we’ll leave a note and get back in time for the concert.” Performing the show isn’t the problem, that still feels fresh and different every single night even when it goes exactly the way it did the last times.

Louis waits, hand clamped over Liam’s mouth, until he sees Liam start to consider his plan. Then he moves his hand.

“What, exactly, do you want to do?”

 

They sneak into Harry’s room before dawn, leaving the note and their mobile phones. Liam had advocated for a more verbose message, but Louis had overruled him. So when Harry wakes, he’ll see ‘Not been kidnapped. Me and Li are playing hooky. See you at the show. -Lou’.

They walk a few blocks away from the stadium before they find a cab and get the driver to take them to only place in the whole state that makes a decent full English. Then after breakfast, they settle in for another long cab ride as they head out to the amusement park that’s about two hours outside of Indianapolis.

They manage to keep a low profile, riding roller coasters all morning with no overt fan sightings, and then they buy new swimming trunks from the gift store and spend the afternoon in the water park. They do get found out eventually, and Louis is upset that he doesn’t have access to Twitter to witness the fan meltdown that is bound to be happening as all these new shirtless pictures of Liam are being posted.

After the third fan encounter, Liam whispers directly into Louis’s ear. “Want to get out of here?” Something about the phrasing send shivers down Louis’s spine, despite the heat.

“Yeah,” he tries to agree, and has to clear his throat as the word seems to get stuck. “Yes,” he says again. “Let’s go.”

They make it back to the stadium just in time for dinner. There’s someone from the label looking to chew them out for their disappearing act, but Louis, having anticipated this, politely requests that he and Liam have a full disciplinary meeting with the label and tour management team tomorrow so the severity of their actions can really sink in for them.

And it works.

During the show that night, Louis sees some girls in the middle of the catwalk who’ve printed pictures from that afternoon and put them on signs that ask if he and Liam enjoyed their date. Without thinking too hard about it he pulls Liam over to show him the signs. But Liam’s reaction is off. Sure, he laughs a little and waves at the girls, but to Louis it seems forced.

He tries to put it out of his mind and enjoy the rest of the concert. Not a big deal at all if Liam gets uncomfortable with the mere implication of dating him…

Nevermind.

It’s fine.

 

**[Day 16]**

Liam wakes to an alarm blaring and when he reaches out to turn it off he manages to fall right out of his too narrow bed.

Silencing the alarm, he looks around the room from the floor. Uni housing is his first guess.

It turns out he’s in Birmingham again. Not the exact same room as last time he was a student, but it’s really similar.

His roommate’s bed is empty, so they won’t be any help in getting him to class this morning. He manages to find the syllabi from his course for the semester under a pile of other papers on the top of his desk. He hopes none of it was work that was due today, since he’s just focusing on being physically present in the classes he’s scheduled to be at today.

With no idea how long it would take him to get around campus, he actually ends up sitting outside the building for his first class with half an hour to spare. This gives him a great opportunity to be able to find Louis before he finds Liam. The amount of personal information that he and Louis have online in most of these non-famous worlds amazes Liam. He’s been getting better with his research skills since this whole thing started, but he also thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have been able to get Louis’s mobile number after just one online search.

Louis texts him back almost immediately, informing Liam that he too is a student in this world. Only he’s in Uni in Leeds. Studying theatre. He seems really excited for the chance to go to classes, so Liam just tells him to check in later.

Halfway through his second class of the day, it occurs to Liam that he could have skivved off again, like he did yesterday. They still don’t know, nor will they ever find out, if what they do in these worlds will have any consequences. But the prospect of going back to hang out in his room, alone, is not nearly as appealing as running off to have an adventure with Louis.

At least the Liam in this world seems popular. He keeps getting called over in classes and at lunch to sit by people who know him and are friendly with him. It’s nice.

When he gets back to his flat late that afternoon, he’s sold on the university thing in a way he wasn’t a couple of weeks ago. It had been fun and all, but he and Louis both were so new to this and confused by what was happening that he’d never fully relaxed into the experience.

And it’s Friday. With how popular Liam’s been, there’s no way he doesn’t have plans tonight. Just as he picks up his mobile to check if he’s the type that has things scheduled in his calendar, a text comes through from someone named Jamie, asking if Liam is still meeting them for dinner before going to Gregory’s house party.

Brilliant. Liam has Friday-night plans. Possibly a date if he’s correctly interpreting tone of the texts with Jamie as flirty.

He talks a bit to Louis to waste time, but doesn’t mention the date. Louis is the one actively throwing a house party in this world at his Uni, so Liam doesn’t want to distract him.

He walks slowly to the dining hall, keeping an eye out for anyone that looks familiar to this Liam. He’d tried to remember who Jamie is, but he just gets a fluttery feeling in his stomach, no physical description.

“Liam!” Someone calls as he nears the dining hall. Liam turns to look, and for a moment, thinks Louis is running up to him before he remembers that Louis is in Leeds.

As soon as Liam sees him clearly, he knows this bloke is Jamie. And judging by the kiss he gives Liam after saying hi, this is still a date, only Jamie is his boyfriend, not a girlfriend.

During dinner, it keeps throwing him off. Not that he has a boyfriend, but how much this boy reminds him of Louis. His eyes are a similar shade of blue, and he has that same sort of sharpness in his face with almost the right level of mischievousness in his smile. And he’s just about the same size as Louis, right at what Liam knows to be the exact height to fit perfectly under his arm, but Liam keeps his arms to himself as they walk together to the house party.

He’s probably acting uncharacteristically standoffish, but he just can’t get over the thought that if this guy is this Liam’s type, this Liam would date Louis in a heartbeat.

In trying to compensate for his earlier quietness, Liam ends up drinking a lot once they get to the party. Probably too much. But the world being slightly blurry makes everything feel easier. He’s able to go with the flow as Jamie drags him over to the makeshift dance floor as an excuse to press their bodies together. And then to follow when Jamie retreats into a darkened corner of the flat, leaning against the wall and inviting Liam to box him in.

It’s dark and Liam’s drunk and he lets himself be pulled down into a snog by Jamie, but immediately, his mind wanders, going back to Paris and how much he had wanted to kiss Louis there. And yesterday, at the waterpark, on their adventure, Liam’s sure there was a moment he could have--Liam pulls away from Jamie suddenly.

He shouldn’t be doing this, snogging Jamie, thinking of Louis. He takes two large steps backward, and bumps into an end table, windmilling his arms as he tries to keep himself and it from falling over. He gets his balance back and sees that there’s a clock on the table; it reads 23:59, and Liam has never related to Cinderella more in his life. Unsure of how much longer he has here, he steps back towards Jamie, apology on his lips, but it’s midnight before he gets the words out.

 

**[Day 17]**

At least he was in a pub this time, Louis thinks as he tries to catch his breath, not another club. He had blinked over into a Louis who had been chugging down a pint at his local in Doncaster. He had started choking and sputtering and ended up with at least half the beer down the front of his Rovers kit.

He's just coming back from trying to clean himself off when he hears Liam’s voice, singing. For a moment, he thinks Liam's at the pub with him, doing some professional sounding karaoke.

But he's not, it's the radio.

While his friends continue to cut up and drink, he sits, googling Liam then himself.

It had to happen at some point, a world where Liam was a famous solo artist and he was...not.

He goes back to the Liam search and clicks on the image tab, taking time to look at each one closely. There’s something wrong with Liam’s smile. He looks lonely.

Then again, maybe Louis is imagining it because he wants Liam to look lonely in a world where they aren’t together. In the band. Together in the band.

“Are you cyberstalking that pop star again?” Stan asks, making Louis almost drop his mobile when he tries to pull it towards his chest and lock the screen at the same time.

“What? No? I don’t know what you’re talking about. We ready for another round?”

The couple next to him laugh as if he just delivered the punchline to a well known joke, but Stan pats him on the shoulder in a way that makes Louis feel he’s being condescended to. “If we’re at the point in the night when you’re looking up pictures of Liam Payne on your phone, then you’re cut off.”

Inside, Louis’s mind is screaming, ‘what the fuck,’ but he does his best to keep his outward appearance neutral. This is something to investigate, just another weird quirk of an alternate universe. He manages to thank Stan for looking out for him, and when the group debates heading to an after hours club, Louis begs off home.

He’s got research to do.

In this world, Louis soon finds out, Liam had made it through to the X-Factor live shows in 2008. He didn't make it all the way to the finals, but far enough that he got a record contract. Put out his first album a month after his 16th birthday, a few weeks before Justin Bieber’s debut EP. Louis feels a sort of vindictive glee at reading the one of the older links from Liam’s Wikipedia page, an article that describes Bieber as having ‘a Liam Payne haircut’.

Once Louis’s research binge is complete, he's struck with the realisation that he won't be able to easily get in touch with Liam in this world. He’ll just be one voice among millions trying to get his attention. He opens Twitter on his phone anyway, preparing to reply to a couple of Liam’s most recent tweets, because if Liam’s awake, he could be looking for Louis right now.

Liam’s Twitter profile is already open in the app, like this world’s Louis had been looking at it earlier that night. What's strange though is that it looks like Louis isn't following Liam. He clicks the follow button, he'll need to do that if they’re going to DM later, but then a notification pops up.

_You have been blocked from following this account at the request of the user._

Liam, _his Liam_ , almost never blocks fans. He and Louis have had hours long discussions about how Liam needs to block more people for his own good.

But he’s blocked Louis here.

With some trepidation, Louis looks at his own account. He actually cringes when he sees that his profile picture is one of himself beaming next to an uncomfortable looking Liam. Louis’s probably about 19 in the picture, Liam 17, and it looks like it was taken at a meet-n-greet. Once he’s done analysing the details in the picture, he starts skimming his posted tweets. The most recent ones are full of anger over being blocked mixed with pride that Liam had noticed him enough to bother. He keeps reading but never sees anything so horrible to be the obvious catalyst for the blocking, just normal tweets: speculation on football transfer rumours, complaints on the weather and traffic, live commentary on gigs and telly shows, and some random replies to Liam’s account. Scrolling back up, there’s one from earlier that night catches his eye and takes his breath away like he's been suddenly punched in the gut.

 _Louis_Tomlinson: @real_liam_payne_ _I’m just sad you’ll never know we were meant to be in each others lives_

It’s just...he’s not wrong. This world’s Louis.

All those worlds where One Direction exists, and then there was Paris…

He’s not wrong.

Louis and Liam were meant to be in each other’s lives.

 

He has a hard time falling asleep when he finally attempts to succumb to exhaustion. He’s so tired that his eyes physically hurt, and yet his brain will not turn off. And when he does drift off, he wakes back up a few minutes later in a panic, thinking that hours must have passed. Then he rolls over to check his mobile for the time and any notifications, waking himself up even more in the process. But every time, the mobile’s notification screen stays blank and the cycle starts over again.

At dawn, he gives up on sleep altogether and makes himself a cuppa.

The few minutes of sleep Louis did get were just long enough to be full of disturbing dreams. As he sits and sips at his tea, he tries to put them out of his head.

It’s been a very long time since Louis has felt this level of exhaustion. This is like Zayn leaving the band week level of exhaustion.

Wait.

In a daze, Louis puts down his mug and crosses the flat to the small writing desk in the corner of the living room. In the top drawer of the desk is a journal. He flips through it quickly, as if he knows the general section he needs to get to. His eyes take a moment to focus long enough to read the words. Then he reads the paragraph three more times before it starts to make sense.

But it doesn’t make any sense.

It’s a journal entry.

Detailing every thought that went through his mind when their management, their fucking management, had told them Zayn had decided not to come back on tour.

How.

How is this here, in this world where he’s not Louis Tomlinson From One Direction, he’s Louis Tomlinson Who Still Lives in Doncaster and Never Made Anything Special of His Life?

Louis keeps looking through the journal, looking for other entries and sees, again and again, experiences that jive with his own memories. It’s a lot to deal with. He barely notices the journal falling out of his hands, nor does he make the conscious decision to sit down, but he still finds himself on the ground.

He’s not sure how much time passes, but eventually, he makes himself get up. Makes a new cup of tea. Eats some cereal. Takes a shower. Brushes his teeth and even flosses.

While he busies his body, his brain tries to work out logical explanations. He ends up with three:

  1. This universe’s Louis is psychic. He can see things happening in other worlds and writes them down.
  2. This universe’s Louis is crazy and also a really good guesser.
  3. Louis is crazy, he’s not an internationally famous popstar, and he hasn’t been traveling through other universes, he’s having a breakdown.



Sadly, option C is the most rational, but Louis isn’t quite ready to give up on his reality just yet. Going against every instinct he’s developed over the last 5 years, Louis tweets his mobile number, publically, so Liam will be able to call him when he looks Louis up. It’s low risk, Louis doesn’t have many followers here, but it still feels so wrong. Then, he pulls up Liam’s account again, checking to see if Liam’s posted anything new since he last looked.

Nothing.

But really, no news is good news. It’s still early, Liam could have been asleep at midnight and hasn’t even consciously experienced a moment of this universe yet. When Liam does wake up, surely the first thing he’ll do is look up Louis. Then Liam will call him. And Louis will know for sure that he isn’t having a breakdown.

He just needs Liam to call.

 

Louis works at keeping himself busy, distracting himself as best he can. If he was Liam, he’d go for a run, but he’s not that desperate. Yet. He does actually clean his flat, which is almost as out of character for him as running would be, but it makes him feel accomplished.

He’s just finished gathering up all the dirty clothes and considering finding the closest laundrette when his mobile finally rings. But when he sees that it’s his mum, his excitement turns quickly to disappointment and then guilt at feeling disappointed.

“Hi mum,” he says, as cheerfully as he can.

“Hello, love, how are we doing this morning?”

They make small talk for a few minutes and Louis feels himself relaxing. Nothing ever seems that bad when he’s got his mum’s voice in his ear. But then she mentions that Stan had called her this morning and the tension is back. She’s checking in on his mental state.

“I’m fine,” Louis tries. “It wasn’t anything, I wasn’t...”

“Louis, you know that we just worry about you, that’s all.”

She keeps talking, but it gets muted for a moment as another call comes through. From a blocked number. It rings again as Louis stares down at the phone.

“Mum, I’ve got another call coming through, I’ve got to go.”

“No, Louis. You’ve avoided this conversation long enough--”

The other line rings in for a third time, one more and it’ll go to voicemail.

Shit.

He takes a deep breath and hangs up on his mum, wincing at the havoc that action will bring down on this world’s Louis, but hopefully he’ll be in another universe by then. If there really are other universes.

“Hello?” Louis says, resisting the urge to just assume that Liam is on the other side.

“Lou!”

Oh thank fuck. It’s Liam. Tears well up in the corner of his eyes as he tries to deal with the overwhelming sense of relief.

“Liam,” he says, desperately trying to keep his feelings out of his voice and failing miserably. “It’s really good to hear from you.”

“Louis? Are you okay?” Liam is annoyingly perceptive, Louis tells himself. That's the only reason he can see through Louis’s rock solid facade.

A facade that crumbles even further the second time he tries to speak. “Yeah. Yes. Fine,” Louis stammers. “Just...do you think… Can you come get me?”

Louis’s barely gotten the question out before Liam’s answering, “Text me your address, I'll be there as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Li.”

It takes a few hours, but eventually Liam arrives. Real life Liam Payne, his Liam, solidly stood in front of Louis, not bothered at all by the extra long hug Louis subjects him to. It's not that Louis needed to touch him to make sure he was real, but being able to touch him is still reassuring as fuck.

They’re nearly back to London before Louis comprehends just how much this world has upset him. If he had been his usual self, he would have insisted that Liam come with him to visit Stan at work, if only to mess with him. They could have staged a chance meeting or a giant fake fight or just acted like their normal selves which would probably been strange enough to anyone who's not used to the and LouisandLiam show.

“Oh, hey,” Liam says, distracting Louis from his missed opportunity regrets, “my flat in this world is around the corner from your place, your London house. Want to stop and get a takeaway curry from your usual place?”

“Liam, you are the best human being on the planet.” Liam beams at him before turning back to watch the road. Louis wonders if this world’s Louis will remember anything from this day, and if remembering would make anything better or worse for him.

Worse, probably. Louis thinks on it for a moment longer, and decides definitely, it would make things worse.

But he pushes the thoughts out of his head. Louis doesn't want to spend any more time thinking about what his life would be like if Liam wasn’t a part of it. That's something he’ll never have to find out.

 

**[Day 18]**

Liam really needs to piss. He’s not really awake as he stumbles across the hotel room into the loo to relieve himself, so it’s not until he finishes and stands up that he realised he had sat down in the first place.

Yeah, he thinks, as he looks up and catches a glimpse of the mirror, he’s a girl.

He’s been half expecting it to happen to him, ever since Paris, but still he wasn’t prepared for it at all. There probably isn’t a way to prepare for a sudden gender swap. He gets it now, though, why Louis had locked himself up in the bathroom for so long that day. There’s just so much to take in.

Starting at the top, then. His hair isn’t much longer than it was when he was 18, and is just as curly and messy right now as he wore it then. Eyebrows a little thinner, but probably through some painful plucking and waxing more than the change in his genetics. Eyes are the same, though ringed with last night’s eyeliner in that way that Liam always thought looked hot on his girlfriends. His lips are the same too, but he knows his lips are always pretty full, for a boy. Birthmark in the same place on his neck, that’s a relief that Liam wasn’t expecting to feel. He’s not yet ready to take off his shirt, so he takes a step back to get a look at his full body. Definitely slighter, thinner and a little shorter than he’s used to, but he feels fit and strong. He flexes his arms, there’s definitely some definition in his biceps. Good. He wonders if he boxes in this universe, and gets a flash of memory that confirms it.

There’s no real way for him to prepare for this, so he takes a deep breath and just goes for it, taking off all the clothes he’s wearing. Straight away his eyes glide down; he definitely does not have a dick. His hand moves between his legs, just to feel, before he really notices what he’s doing. Maybe, just maybe, he should stop and table that _exploration_ for later. He looks back up his body, shocked that it’s taken him this long to check out his own breasts. His fingers flex when he does, he really wants to touch them too. They’re nice, not too big, not as big as Louis’s were in Paris anyway, but he can feel how they are slightly heavy on his chest, it would probably be more uncomfortable if they were bigger. Unfortunately, he’s got hardly any arse to speak of, which is expected but still slightly disappointing.

Now would be a good time to go back out into the hotel room and start trying to find Louis, but instead Liam decides to have a shower. And if he just so happens to have to touch every inch of himself and this body during said shower, it’s just that he’s being thorough and fastidious about his cleanliness.

Later, he finds that dressing himself is harder than anticipated. He knows how to take a bra off a bird, why is it so bloody hard to put one on? Frustrated, he goes through his suitcase until he finds a sports bra. That is much easier to deal with. He’s just pulled on some trackies when there’s a short knock on the hotel door and it opens before he can answer.

Jade Thirlwall is laughing as she pulls along a grumpy-looking, also female Louis behind her. “Your girlfriend was so drunk last night, she climbed into bed with me instead of you. Not that I minded the cuddles, but now that the hangover is setting in, she’s your problem.” Louis grumbles, takes three steps further into the room, and falls face first into their bed.

Girlfriend. Of course. Liam tries to process this important piece of information while he tucks the duvet around Louis before he can complain about not having it, and turns back to Jade. “Thanks, I guess.”

“I better go make sure Cher’s not suffering too badly. I don’t know why she and Lou insist on doing this every time we’ve got a day off. Oh, and nice look, Sporty Spice.” She’s out of the door before Liam can think of a good response.

“Liam. Leeyum. Leeeeeyumm,” Louis croaks from under the bed covers. Liam crawls back into bed to talk to him. “I’m a girl again. And I keep blinking over into clubs. What’s up with that?”

“You do like a night out.”

“Yeah, I was out with Cher Lloyd too, that was weird. And blokes kept buying me drinks.”

“And you just had to drink all of them, right?”

“Sin to waste booze, you know that. Hey, you’re a girl too. At least we’re in girl club together this time.”

Liam smiles. It is better, knowing that Louis is in the same boat. “Did Jade give you any water this morning?”

Louis pouts. “No, she sucks at taking care of hungover people. She was being all loud and kept making fun of me.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, love. Sit up for a moment and I’ll get you some, then you should go back to sleep.”

“And then sausage rolls.”

“I’ll do my best.”

 

Louis sleeps for a few more hours, and when he shows signs of stirring, Liam leaves a note that he’s out on a food mission. He found out earlier that he and Louis were part of a pretty successful girl group with Jade and Cher, and that they were runners-up on X-Factor in 2010. He feels a little bad about having stolen Jade from Little Mix, but in all fairness he was friends with her first and he’s been having an amazing time watching all their music videos with his headphones on while Louis slept.

When he returns to their hotel with Greggs in hand, he’s surprised to find Louis up and about and resembling an actual human being. And he has incredible cleavage again. “How did you manage the bra? I couldn't figure it out this morning.”

“YouTube tutorial,” Louis says, smugly.

Liam make a mental note to look one up later if he needs to, but he’s perfectly comfortable in the workout clothes he’s wearing now.

“Did you look us up yet? We’re in a girlband and in a relationship. With each other.” Again, Liam thinks. We’re together again, me and Louis, happy and in love again.

“Well that explains the double-headed dildo I found in your luggage,” Louis says carelessly gesturing towards the sex toy that he’d moved to the top of the nightstand. Liam glances over and completely fails at being nonchalant when his thighs clench together and he wobbles a bit as he’s overwhelmed with memories of using it. Why are the sex memories always the strongest ones?

“How can you be so casual about it?” Liam asks, before he groaning and throwing himself down on the bed. “Do you not get the full bodied, visceral memories when you look at it?”

Louis cackles. “I do! I did. Wasn’t it awesome? And remember, I’ve seen your porn stash, don’t lie to me, I know being a lesbian is, like, ultimate fantasy stuff for you.”

“It’s been way too long since I had sex,” Liam complains, ignoring Louis’s porn statement completely.

Louis nods. “Me too. Even in worlds where I’m not a famous, I still keep worrying I’ve got a secret girlfriend in that world that I’ll be cheating on if I go out on the pull.”

“I’m your secret girlfriend in this world. Except, it’s not a secret, even though the papers call us ‘gal pals’.”

Suddenly, Louis is on top of him, grinning down from his position of straddling Liam’s hips. “Liam, I’ve just had the best idea.”

Before Liam can get a question out, Louis leans down and presses their lips together. It’s rather chaste, and Louis starts pulling away before Liam can properly kiss back, which is just blatantly unfair. Liam has to sit up to chase Louis’s lips and kiss him back. This time neither of them pull away, and soon their lips part, tongues get involved, and then they’re properly snogging.

When they finally break apart, Liam needs to take a moment to catch his breath. But he notices Louis looking shifty and slightly panicked. “I’ve been wanting to do that since Paris,” Liam blurts out. Maybe even before that, he doesn’t say. Maybe in every world since then too.

Louis audibly gulps before responding. “Me too. And how many other chances will we get to be lesbians?”

“Not that many. We'll be home soon.”

“So you're in?”

Oh yeah, he's in. Instead of answering out loud, Liam uses the size advantage he still has to flip them over, slotting his leg between Louis’s and leaning down for another kiss.

The kiss gets heated, fast, and Liam loses time for a bit when Louis scrapes his teeth along Liam’s jawline, just under his ear. Then he becomes aware of how he’s grinding down, basically riding Louis’s bare thigh, the friction making him feel so good. God, he’s feeling so slick and wet that Louis must surely be able to feel it, even through Liam’s pants and joggers. He shifts forward, pulling Louis’s other thigh up a bit and making sure his leg is pressed against the crux of Louis’s, Louis needs to experience this too.

It’s all so amazing. Literally, the best sex Liam has ever had and they spend almost all of the rest of their time in this world in bed. They hit a bit of a snag when they stopped to argue about who got to go down on the other first, with Liam eventually winning after a fierce bout of rock-paper-scissors, but even that was fun. Having sex with Louis is fun. They take advantage of their bodies current capabilities for multiple orgasms and compete, seeing who can make the other come the fastest, and the most times in a row. It was the best sort of competition, since no matter what, they’re both winners.

Later, when their room service gets delivered, Liam’s legs feel so shaky he can barely walk the 10 steps it takes to open the door. Louis refused to even try.

They eat and rest and watch _Family Guy_ on ITV2 and Liam tries to stay awake for the midnight transition, but he’s fighting a losing battle. He curls himself up against Louis’s side, laying his head onto Louis’s chest. Louis mutters about his breasts not being Liam’s pillows, but wraps his arm around Liam’s shoulders even as he’s complaining, anchoring Liam in place.

 

**[Day 19]**

Louis never thought he’d be so disappointed to wake up male. He likes having a dick, and if he has to think about it, and he has thought about it these last couple of weeks, he still feels most comfortable in a male body, but yesterday… Yesterday was mind blowing. Paradigm shifting.

And agonizingly unrepeatable.

They’ve only two more worlds after this one. Two more days before this adventure is over.

Before things get back to normal, or their normal anyway. Their actions will have consequences again. They won’t be confined to this single Friday in the middle of summer anymore; time will move forward. Tour will end. There will be no need to check in with each other every single day.

And Liam, finally with free time on his hands, will find himself someone, find himself a girl, and probably marry her before their upcoming break is over. It’s bound to happen. Liam always has a girlfriend, and not counting these weeks they’ve been hopping through parallel universes, it’s been over four months since his last breakup. It’s the longest that Louis has ever seen Liam be single in the five years they’ve known each other.

Liam will find himself a girl, and Louis will never find anyone who fits with him more perfectly than Liam does. Did.

 

Louis is at his mum’s house again.

He walks downstairs without combing through his room for clues to this world’s differences. He’s only here for a day, it’s really not long enough for anything to really affect him.

He helps him mum make lunches for everyone and walks Daisy and Phoebe to their day camp, a lot quieter than he means to be. Quieter than the last time they did this. It’s just...a lot has changed for Louis since then.

On the walk back, his mobile buzzes with a notification. A “bigpayno” has started following him on Instagram and there’s a direct message photo of Liam’s face with a phone number in the caption.

“Aren’t you supposed to like a couple of my photos and @ one of your mates before sending me a DM?” Louis asks as soon as Liam picks up. “Can’t believe you, violating Insta hook up protocol.”

Liam laughs like Louis is the funniest person in the world, and Louis congratulates himself on his ability to keep his tone light. Then Liam starts telling him about what he’s found out about his life in this world, and Louis finds himself claiming that he’s just woke up and is still in bed at his mum’s. It’s not a big lie. He just would rather not inflict his current apathy on Liam.

“Still in bed, huh? I guess I really wore you out yesterday.” Liam says, sounding flirty.

Louis forces out a laugh. “Yeah. You really did,” he says, while inwardly sighing. Liam can already joke about it, that’s...great. That’ll be the legacy of the most perfect day of Louis’s life, an inside joke about that one time they had phenomenal sex.

Brilliant.

Louis fakes his way through some seemingly casual chitchat on the rest of his walk and then makes his excuses to get off the phone once he gets close to home, citing his need to get up and learn about this world. Liam had to go anyway, he works at Tescos and his shift starts in an hour.

Of course Liam is excited about putting a shift in. Probably trying to get in as many new experiences as possible. It’s a very Liam attitude to have. That’s what yesterday must have been to Liam. All it was to him. And yes, Louis realises that it was he that framed it that way to Liam in the first place. That’s on him. But in his defense, Louis had no idea of how good it would be and how he’d feel today, and he had been in a delicate and emotional state yesterday. How was he to know any better?

When Louis finally lets himself back into the house, he sees that his mum has already left for work. He takes it as a sign that he should take the rest of the day off from this world. He makes himself some tea, grabs a large bag of crisps for later, and makes a nest of blankets on the couch in the family room. He catches the end of Jeremy Kyle and then switches over to CBeebies and contemplates searching his old stash spots to see if this world’s Louis uses them too. Catching a buzz and watching kids telly sounds like the best idea he’s had in weeks.

The novelty of doing absolutely nothing does wear off eventually, as does his high, and a few hours later Louis finally gives in and tries to learn about this world, if only to have something true to tell Liam later. It turns out that Louis passed his A-levels the first time around in this world, never auditioned for X-Factor, expanded a gap year into two years traveling abroad, and now is in school part-time, halfway through a degree to become a neonatal nurse.

It’s not a bad life, Louis decides. Then he busies himself looking up this world’s Harry (law student), Niall (YouTube “celebrity”), and after some trepidation, Zayn (student and catalog model, which Louis is irrationally annoyed about). He texts Liam the information as he finds it, messages that mostly go unanswered except for a couple ‘omg’s and ‘haha’s, which Louis is uncharacteristically not upset about.

He’s not exactly sure why, but by the time his various family members start arriving home that evening, his mood has much improved. After thoroughly enjoying the cacophonous chaos the Tomlinson-Deakins call an everyday family dinner, Louis escapes to his room to Skype Liam. They have exactly enough time before midnight to watch every single video on PhenomeNiall’s channel, and Louis is determined to see them all.

 

**[Day 20]**

Liam has always had a complicated relationship with sleep. Constant jet lag, post-performance adrenaline rushes, late-night recording sessions, there’s always something messing with his natural sleep cycle. And then there are the times when he has to try and sleep at night, before an early morning commitment or particularly busy day, he’s so anxious about getting enough sleep, he can lay in bed for hours unable to quiet his racing mind.

And then there are times like tonight, when Liam wakes suddenly and fully out of a deep sleep, snippet of a new song stuck in his head, knowing he won't be able to relax again until he’s worked it out.

He has no idea when this world’s Liam fell asleep, but its nearly 4AM now, so he's at least gotten 4 hours in, which is better than a lot of nights Liam’s had.

Still, he lets out a loud, huffing sigh, a small moment of protest against his brain, and is rewarded by a light punch to the shoulder along with Louis’s half asleep voice grumbling at him to shut up. Liam rolls over quickly to face Louis and nearly gets poked in the eye as Louis tries to put his hand over Liam’s mouth.

“Shh, Li. Sleep.” And then Louis turns over, facing away from Liam, and starts snoring moments later.

Liam cheeks are aching the smile on his face is so big. He hates that he’s wide awake in the middle of the night, but he really does love waking up next to Louis.

That snippet of a song buzzes around in Liam’s head again, a hazy memory of a dream melody, and Liam know he’s going to have to hum it out loud until he figures out how it translates to the waking world. So he slowly and carefully gets out of the hotel bed, trying not to disturb the sleeping dragon. He hopes they’re in a suite, but it’s hard to tell in the darkness.

There’s a moment of deja vu as he stumbles over some discarded pants and joggers, when he realises that he had been naked while sleeping in the same bed as Louis. He pulls on the joggers, and by the way his ankles feel exposed, guesses they’re Louis’s. There’s a big part of him that wants to go back towards the bed, check under the duvet to see if Louis is wearing anything, but it both feels intrusive and unnecessary. Liam’s already noticing some very specific aches as he moves through the room, similar to that time he had pulled a gluteal muscle in training overdoing squats, and at the same time the soreness is completely unfamiliar.

He stumbles a little when he reaches the door, but doesn’t make too much noise as he makes his way into the suite’s sitting room. As he sits down, gingerly, on the couch, he abandons the dream melody to process this new information.

Okay, Liam thinks. The Liam and Louis of this world slept together tonight, before midnight, obviously. If he closes his eyes, he’ll probably be able to picture it, remember it. He keeps his eyes open for a long moment, internally debating on what it says about him that he is both anticipating the memory and scared to physically let himself remember it.

His curiosity wins out before a whole minute has passed.

He tilts his head back, relaxing into the sofa and shutting his eyes tightly. He legs fall slightly open as he remembers the feeling of looking up at Louis, focusing on the look on Louis’s face as he positioned himself between the legs Liam had spread much wider. His thighs burn slightly just from the memory of that stretch. Then other parts of him respond as well.

Liam tries to be surprised by these revelations, but after everything he’s experienced this last few weeks, he really can’t be.

“Alright, universes,” Liam whispers, needing to say this out loud. “I get it. We’re meant for each other.” He pictures Louis sleeping in the other room and is overwhelmed by feelings of fondness and desire. There are worlds out there where Louis and Liam don’t know each other, Liam knows that, he experienced a few of them. But right now there is not a doubt in his mind. Every Liam, in every world, loves Louis. ‘Every single me loves every single you,’ he imagines saying in the climax moment of their RomCom adventure.

He should go wake him up. Right now. He should jump on the bed until Louis hits him in the face with a pillow. He should kiss him awake slowly, gently. Tickle him, pour water on his face. Get back into bed and pull him close, squeeze him tight. Initiate a pillow fight himself. He shifts on the sofa, moving around until he’s lying comfortably on his side as he imagines more scenarios, trying to pick out the best one.

 

When Liam opens his eyes again the room is much brighter and there’s a blanket tucked around him. He laughs a little at himself and the irony of falling asleep while planning the best way to wake Louis up.

Louis.

Liam can feel his lips curling up at the corners involuntarily and his face starts to feel a little warm. Again he internally scoffs, and shakes his head. He’s so lame. So obvious. Dumb with love. And really fucking happy about it.

He jumps up and resists running straight into the bedroom. Instead he heads to the loo, optimistically deciding to brush his teeth first. But when he does peek inside the other room, the bed is empty, looking like it probably has been for a while. Louis must have gotten up earlier, that’s where Liam got the blanket.

Liam nods to himself. That’s okay, he’ll head down to breakfast, look for Louis there.

He goes through the motions of his normal morning routine, and then afternoon routine, keeping an eye out for Louis throughout every step, but never catches up with him. It’s not until they gather to be driven over to their interview and appearance at a radio station that they are finally in the same place at the same time.

A van with their security team and Harry and Niall is probably not the best place to profess his love, so Liam settles for just sitting close to Louis, pressing their sides together from shoulder to knee. He wishes Louis would attack and try and pinch him or something so he could have an excuse to sit and hold his hand.

“Why didn’t you wake me this morning?” Liam asks, his voice low.

Louis shrugs. “You looked cozy. And like, knew we’re together here in the band. Didn’t think we needed to check in.”

“Yeah, okay.” Makes sense. Liam had wanted to let Louis sleep too, or, well, his first instinct had been that. Liam rocks a little in his seat, causing their shoulders to bump together. “Happy we’re here, together today.”

Louis is quiet for a moment, leaning into Liam a bit more before he answers, “Yeah. Me too.”

Liam keeps looking for a chance to get Louis alone, but after the interview is a photoshoot for the next album and after the photoshoot, Paddy ushers Liam into a car with Harry while Louis is sent off with Niall. Liam turns around in his seat, trying to keep an eye on Louis’s car even as they turn and head in opposite directions.

“Shouldn't I be the one looking forlornly out of the car window? It is my actual boyfriend that's being driven away from me.” Harry comments in an amused tone.

“Your boyfriend?” Liam asks before he can stop himself. Please don’t say Louis, he thinks desperately.

“Yeah, the whole reason we’re going out to be seen on our ‘bro date’ tonight?”

“Yeah, right. Of course.” Liam laughs awkwardly, trying to wrack his brain for more information. He and Harry are going somewhere to be papped. Because they’re trying to deflect attention from the fact that he’s dating Louis or Niall? No, that feels wrong. He waits for the requisite 10 seconds it takes for Harry to get out his mobile and get distracted by texting before he gets out his own for research.

It’s Harry and Niall, he soon finds. Liam was CC’d on an email from their publicist detailing the whole coming out strategy. It started two weeks ago with an exclusive interview with The Guardian and continued with public dates where Niall and Harry were officially instructed, in writing, to “act however they want”. By the pap shots Liam easily finds online, however the two of them want included lots of PDA. It doesn't tell him anything and him and Louis’s relationship in this world, but Liam will just have to trust that those two will work it out. And the plan for tonight is to publicly spend time with “other bandmates” to show that their romantic relationship does not negatively affect any intraband friendships.

That puts an end to Liam’s ideas about skipping out early to find Louis. He has an obligation to fulfill, and will show his support of his bandmates as well as he can tonight. And he has missed hanging out with Harry.

They go to dinner at a trendy new restaurant that serves gourmet sandwiches. Harry’s is mostly full of sprouts and grilled avocado which Liam refuses to try when Harry offers, but he really can’t complain about the restaurant choice when he tries his fried egg, prosciutto, & goat cheese panini. Then they head to an art gallery that's opening a new exhibit on comic book inspired pop art. It's amazing. Liam tries to make a lasting mental note to look up the artist in their world. He definitely wants to own one or two of these pieces. Harry buys three before they leave.

But even though he had a great time, he’s disappointed to see that it's already half an hour to midnight when they get in the car to head back for their hotel. Even this late, they’re not going to be able to get through LA traffic quick enough to get back in time to see Louis before they blink into the next world.

He texts Louis to tell him as much, but Louis doesn't seem all that concerned.

_Don't worry about it, I'll see you tomorrow. Or the day after that._

Liam tries not to pout at Louis’s less than enthusiastic response, but Harry catches him in one anyway and he pokes at Liam’s lip until Liam can't help but laugh. Then he lets Liam spend the rest of his time in this world elaborately braiding Harry’s hair as their car inches it's way across the city.

 

**[Day 21]**

Louis’s not really surprised to wake up alone on the morning of their last day in a flat instead of a tour bus or hotel. This is their last day; it’s fitting that they’ll have to do this one last time, him and Liam, playing the game of finding each other wherever they are in the world.

At least he’s in London, if the view out of his flat is to be trusted.

Maybe Liam is in London too. Louis gets the idea that he’ll take a picture of his building and text it to Liam, see if he can figure out where in London Louis is. Like a test.

It's not until he’s standing across the street, taking the picture, does he realise how odd he must look, standing in a hoodie, taking a photo of a building.

“Louis?” Louis tenses and spins around and stares dumbfounded as Liam’s face is taken over by a wide grin. “What are you doing out here?” Liam continues.

“Obviously was taking a picture of my building so I could send it to you, Leeyum. You know, in case you were also in London, thought it would make it easier for us to meet up. But I guess I don’t have to do that now.”

“You live here?” Liam asks, pointing across the street at his building just to confirm.

Louis shrugs. “I woke up here and have keys, so I figured I did.”

“I live here too!” Then Liam starts filling Louis in on his morning, how he woke up early to two unfamiliar flatmates having a screaming row over who had finished off the soy milk. That had quickly segued into flatmate one accusing flatmate two of deliberately bringing his friends round for lads nights only when it's flatmate one’s weekend to clean up and then they had both turned to Liam to have him side with them and Liam decided it was the perfect time to go for a run. He hadn't even grabbed his mobile.

They head back inside and go straight to Louis’s flat on the top floor, since Liam doesn’t want to have to interact with his flatmates again today if he can help it. “This is a nice place.” Liam says once they get inside, and Louis takes the time to actually look around beyond the view that had captured his attention when he first woke up.

It is pretty posh, but definitely not decorated to Louis’s normal tastes. It's all very...antique-y. Tiffany lamps, a collection of blue and white vases, ottomans, a claw-footed tub in the loo, a whole wall covered in old maps, a couple of wooden crates that Louis can't decide if they are fancy end tables or just functional crates. And so many decorative knick knacks that seem to have no purpose.

He’s about to reach out and examine some richly coloured stone paperweights when Liam tentatively trails a couple of fingers down the length of Louis’s arm. The touch is light, but it sends a shiver through Louis’s whole body.

“Louis,” Liam says, “there was something I had wanted to tell you yesterday.”

There’s something off about Liam’s voice. It’s shaky, but only slightly. Most other people might not have noticed. Louis takes a step back and leans against the wall, trying to look casual, but watching Liam closely. “Yeah?” Louis asks and feels himself go warm as he watches Liam step forward towards Louis and slowly look him down and up.

“Yeah.” Liam breathes, and it feels both like the answer and a completely new question at the same time.

At the exact moment that Louis realises that Liam is within arm’s reach, he finds that he’s already moved and grabbed at Liam, pulling him in closer, ‘til Liam’s right in front of him, against him, standing as close as possible. Liam takes a deep breath in. They haven’t kissed yet, and Louis knows they’re about it, knows he can tip forward and make it happen, but he waits, waits to see what Liam’s going to do.

“I love you,” Liam says and then continues, talking about realisations and sexuality and desire, as if there’s anything else needs to be said. Louis silences him quickly with a kiss, pressing his smile to Liam’s lips. Liam immediately returns the kiss, pressing even closer somehow.

“Same,” Louis says later, between kisses that are swiftly getting deeper and more passionate. “I love you too.”

 

Sometime later, after they’ve lost all their clothes, put some back on again, gotten takeout, napped, and got naked again for round two, Louis finds himself lying in bed, running this fingertips up and down Liam’s abs, arms, thighs, anything he can reach. “I’m so glad it’s been you,” Louis says, breaking the comfortable silence. “There’s no one else I could have shared, would have wanted to share all these universes with.”

“I’m almost scared to go back,” Liam admits. “It’s been like an adventure lately, with it always being you and me against the world. Worlds, literally.”

“But it’s like that at home too,” Louis says. He strokes his finger down the inside of Liam’s forearm, over the exact spot of unmarred skin that he knows reads ‘I figured it out…’ in their world. “Can you believe how many of these universes we were together in, like in the band and then the other times we found each other? And how easy it was to find each other today?”

Liam grins. “Like we were meant to be?”

“I was trying not to be quite so lame, but yeah, I guess we could be fated.”

“I’d like that.”

Louis laughs and pokes Liam side. “You would, you big romantic loser.”

They drag themselves out of bed again eventually, trying to figure out if they can scrounge together a late dinner from the sad contents of Louis’s fridge. Louis is all about calling out for another delivery meal, they could get pizza this time, but Liam is determined to make pancakes and Louis is interested in watching him try.

They’re halfway through eating the misshapen, but still fairly delicious fruits of Liam’s labour, when a loud cracking noise sounds from near the radiator. They cross the flat quickly and watch in stunned silence as one of the three stone paperweights that Louis had noticed earlier in a box on top of the radiator, the deep ruby one, shakes and moves. Then another one, the teal one, starts moving, and then finally the gold one joins the others.

“Holy shit,” Liam intones. They watch as the not stones start cracking, and from first glance, these are not birds or lizards or anything Louis has ever seen in real life inside.

“Are those--those are fucking dragons!” Louis says, his voice rising. “Oh my god. OH MY GOD!”

Like a scene off of Harry Potter, the three tiny dragons--FUCKING DRAGONS!--finally emerge from their shells and make the most adorably pathetic little chirping noises.

“Wow,” Liam says, awed. “This world has dragons.” Then he reaches out and strokes two fingers down one of the dragon’s backs.

Louis moves immediately, unconsciously, knocking Liam’s hand away. “Don’t touch them!”

“What? Why not? They’re so little.”

Some of his counterpart’s memories flash before Louis’s eyes. Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. Louis isn’t supposed to have these. He definitely wasn’t supposed to let them hatch in his living room. Fuck. He was supposed to load them into that bloody-fucking functional, not designer, crate and send them off so they’d be on a train in the South of France by the time they hatched, not in the middle of bloody London only miles away from where their mother…oh shit.

There’s a piercing shriek, loud and shrill enough that a large crack appears in the large picture window Louis had been so admiring of earlier and the baby dragons’ chirping gets louder, more insistent.

“Clothes, Liam, shoes! We need shoes, now!”

They race back into Louis’s bedroom, throwing on their clothes from earlier and thrusting their feet into trainers. It probably took only 30 seconds, but it turns out they didn’t have 30 seconds to spare. As soon as they step back through the doorway, the whole building shakes violently and one of the walls of Louis’s flat is just gone.

A dragon, an actual fucking 5-meter tall, dark blue skinned dragon darts inside, heading straight for her babies and blocking Liam and Louis’s path to the exit. She takes one big sniff at the tiny dragons and then whirls around, huffing heavy breaths, until she stops, her eyes locking on Liam.

She begins to rear back and Louis moves quickly, shoving Liam back into the bedroom and slamming the door behind them. “Balcony!” He manages to point and scream as a fireball splinters his door. Liam is already out of the window and has climbed down to the balcony below by the time Louis makes it over to the second exit, the emergency exit that this world’s Louis made sure he had access to.

They work together to climb down the balconies as quickly as possible. When they reach the ground level, they run around the side of the building and almost straight into a stream of fire that the dragon blasts at them as she swoops down. They change course and run again.

“Just, got to, get, far enough,” Louis says, as while running as fast as he can. “She’ll, go back, for the, babies, soon.” They keep running, dodging into alleyways, sticking close to tall buildings without room for her immense wingspan. But even with these evasions, she’s getting closer to getting them. Louis’s shirt has caught on fire twice already, and Liam has some minor burns on his calf.

Then, they hear the familiar (to these bodies) wail of the Emergency Animal Control sirens and they relax minutely, knowing that help is coming. That sense of relief makes them slow down for a moment, not pay as much attention as they turn the next corner where the dragon coming right for them. Louis freezes as the dragon dives, he can’t seem to make himself move as the stream of fire comes directly towards him and the next seconds seems to stretch into an eternity as he considers the fact that he’s about to be killed by a dragon. A. Fucking. Dragon. Then, at the last possible moment, Liam tackles him, rolling both of them out of the way of the fire and the diving animal and into the open doorway of a Tube station.

“You okay, Louis?” Liam asks, his words coming out like gasps.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m so sorry, Liam.”

“I was the one who touched the baby.”

“But,” before Louis could protest that it was him who was the dragon smuggler in the first place, the angry mother lands on the street and stalks through the doorway, sniffing loudly, trying to pick up Liam’s scent. There’s nothing they can do this time, nowhere further to run or hide. Then--

 

**[Midnight, 31 July 2015]**

Liam is alive. That’s the first thing he notices. It’s dark here, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust. But then he sees that they’re in the convention center. And his mobile is in his hand, with the flashlight on. He moves around until the beam of light hits Louis, who is standing next to an upturned table, looking shell-shocked. The damned device is lying on the floor in two pieces.

Liam moves to right the table, but gives the device a wide berth and that movement seems to break Louis out of his spell. He hauls Liam in by the front of his shirt and smacks a kiss onto his lips. “Liam! You’re alive!” He kisses him again. “I’m alive!” He shouts, voice echoing in the empty hall. He turns his head slightly to the left and steps even closer into Liam’s space and kisses him again, slower and more lingering this time. “We’re home.”

Finally, Liam pulls back, and holds his hands up to keep Louis from coming back in. Louis frowns and Liam really wants to give up and kiss that look off his face, except, “We need to get out of here without breaking anything else, Louis.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good idea.”

They tear up the bus when they get back to it. Double checking everything in it, every receipt, comic book, songwriting notebook, against their memories of home. Then they start on the electronic research. Every single mobile passcode, Wikipedia entry, fan conspiracy- all the details are exactly like Liam and Louis expect them to be.

“One more thing to check,” Liam says, after he catches sight of his own reflection in the shiny screen of the television. “Take off your shirt, Louis.”

“Not even going to buy me a drink first? Where’s the romance gone?”

“How about you take off your shirt, and I'll show you romance,” Liam challenges. “Also, I want to check your tattoos, make sure they’re all there.” And maybe taste them all while he’s at it, see if they taste any different than yesterday’s Louis’s unmarked skin.

Louis smirks at him, “Are you prepared to check everywhere?”

Liam nods, keeping the grin off his face for a whole three seconds, “I take research very seriously.”

 

The day goes a lot like the other ones they've spent in Indianapolis, and it would be boring if it wasn't so thrilling to see everything happening exactly as it should. Or maybe the thrilling part is the two of them constantly finding time to sneak off into dark corners and fool around. Only they’re proving to be not that great at secret relationships. Back in their world for less than 16 hours, and they’re already been caught in various compromising positions by two crew members, Niall, Lou, and Aino Jawo. Liam thinks back to that coming out plan that he’d read for Harry and Niall two days ago, and talks to Louis about the possibility of getting one of their own started soon.

The show that night is a lot of fun, Liam and Louis playing off each other with energy levels even higher than usual, and running around playing off Niall and Harry too. Liam even observes Louis letting himself interact with Harry for a few brief moments on stage. It's a brilliant night.

But as it gets later, as they get closer to midnight, the uncertainty starts seeping in.

“We are home, right?” Liam asks, unable to keep the nervousness out of his tone. It's a travel night, was supposed to be their Star Wars marathon night, but Niall and Harry had begged off to let them have some ‘alone time’.

“Don't need to catch another eyeful anytime soon,” Niall had said, laughing.

So it’s just the two of them, sitting on the moving bus, watching the clock. They had tried to distract themselves, first with the movie, then they tried FIFA, but they both kept just turning back to check the clock.

“Of course. We’re home. Everything was right. All the details.” Louis answers, sounding like he’s trying to reassure both Liam and himself.

“We’ll know soon enough anyway,” Liam says, eyes moving quickly between Louis’s face and the clock. One minute ‘til midnight. “We’ll see it happen, and we’ll still be here. And we’ll know.”

“Yeah.” Louis says, and Liam squeezes Louis’s hand just a bit tighter, to the point of it being painful for both of them, but he needs it. Needs to in order to feel anchored here, here in this world, with Louis. “Just one more moment…”

 

The end.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here](http://rictusempra-is-riddikulus.tumblr.com/).


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